052 :: HOW

Featuring

How You Been by SML, released by International Anthem in 2025. Listen / Buy direct

Transcript

Jazz wasn't meant to be like this. And I'm not talking about this music's sound or arrangement or atonality. In all those respects, this is exactly how jazz should be: exploratory, experimental, playful, and free. No, I'm talking about something much more basic: the fact that we are listening to a piece of recorded music, whereas jazz is meant to be experienced in the moment of its performance. So how, then, does this recording manage to sound so spontaneous and alive? More than any other jazz record I can think of, I feel like I'm hearing the music come together in real time, every player improvising wildly and continuously finding new directions to move in. Obviously there's the sax out in front, vigorously pushing everything forward. But I also love what the guitar is doing, syncopating with this piercing two-note riff. The drums are, frankly, out of control, and the bass is on a whole other wavelength, holding it down in its own time and feel. And lower in the mix, there's a rolling boil of synth sounds that I can only think to describe as aquatic mallet percussion. Yet somehow, somehow, it all works. And not just works: it grooves, it excites, it cooks, it kills. And as many times as I listen to this recording over and over again, it surprises.

What's not so surprising is that this music originates from live recordings of improvised performances. Its raw musical material was created on the spot. But for this recording, that raw material has been processed and refined, manipulated in post-production into whole new forms. It's like the band took their live performances and distilled what was most vital in them, reconstructing their various bits and bytes into something that's even more live than live. Which is, really, what any good recording should do: to present a rarefied version of what the music, in its original conception, was. But I don't want you to get too hung up on this music's backstory. It's not so important to know how this music came to be; what's important is to hear this music for what it is – to feel the wild energy coursing through its veins – and to marvel that a piece of recorded music could ever sound so extemporaneous and yet also, so intricately arranged.

And what's really remarkable is that this music has these same qualities even when it slows things down, even when it's not playing at full tilt, when it trades free jazz for smooth jazz and veers into something more plainly melodic and mellifluous. Even if it doesn't have quite the same energy, it retains the same spirit: of playfulness, creativity, originality, synergy – a commitment to discover new forms of expression in its motley ensemble of sounds. You can hear this even at the level of the individual parts, the way each instrument is subtly twisted and transformed, unravelling in new and unexpected directions. And some of it is just that these musicians clearly have a predilection for the goofy and the weird: the springy synth, the quacky guitar, the squawky sax. Where others might shy away from these sounds, they lean in, exploring their full sonic possibilities and proving that maybe they're not so goofy after all – that they can be hip or heady or high-minded or hard-nosed or even, in a way, beautiful. Listening to this music, I get the feeling that everything is fair game, and the point is to show us what we've been missing, to make every moment be full of surprise and delight, brimming with the unexpected and unconventional. And so we hear something like paper fluttering, a sax phasing in and out, crunchy static marching forward – an improbable symphony – the shape of jazz to come.

Liner Notes

To learn more about how SML created How You Been, check out this profile from the New York Times.