Small Medium Large

Description

SML is made up of bassist Anna Butterss (Jeff Parker, Daniel Villarreal, Makaya McCraven), synth pro Jeremiah Chiu (Ariel Kalma, Marta Sofia-Honer), saxophonist Josh Johnson (Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, Nate Mercereau, Marquis Hill), percussionist Booker Stardrum (Amirtha Kidambi, Carl Stone, Lee Ranaldo, Patrick Shiroishi) and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann (Sam Wilkes, Meg Duffy, Perfume Genius). Their first album Small Medium Large started as a collection of long improvisations recorded during two distinct adventures over two nights at the beloved Highland Park venue, ETA.
Small Medium Large was designed and recorded in stereo directly on Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with production, recording, and studio composition by SML.
Although the editing, mixing, and rearranging of mixed stereo improvisations is not a new concept (for a modern and relevant example, we can look at Makaya McCraven's production on CIRC), these results are an astonishing expansion of the editing concept by Teo Macero / Miles Davis explored on classics like Bitches Brew, On The Corner, and Get Up With It. Stylistically however, these recordings have more in common with the proto trance rehearsals of Harmonia and with the reassembly technique of Holgar Czukay used in his work with Can. Add to this an extremely intuitive use of the floating pattern poly-rhythm concept by Susumu Yokota and we get a truly mesmerizing vision of timed electronic rhythms augmented by live percussion, while maintaining that elusive human grip.