Photo by Charlie Weinmann

How You Been & The Key To Improvisation — Interview with SML

Interview by Muhammad Azka Muharam

Through analog and modular synthesis of Jeremiah Chiu, combined with Booker Stardrum’s experimental beats, Josh Johnson’s playfulness of sax, Anna Butterss’ groovy bass, and Gregory Uhlmann’s circling guitars, SML’s upcoming second album, How You Been, is a journey of sonic exploration of these prolific composer/producers that delves into the realm of hyperrealism and collectivist approach to music creation.

SML is a new quintet composed of luminaries from Los Angeles’s thriving jazz, improvised, and indie music scenes

We got a chance to talk to SML drummer, Booker Stardrum, about how SML started, the importance of improvisation, and the creative and production process behind How You Been, which is going to be released by International Anthem on 7th November 2025.

Booker Stardrum (BS) & Living Society (LS)

The album is called How You Been. Given you are a supergroup of musicians constantly moving between projects and cities — Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago — does that title serve as a genuine check-in? What does How You Been mean to SML as a collective?

So, just like the last album, this album came together through a series of live performances that we recorded. Then we edited all these performances together. As we’re going through, the first time we got to play a show after putting out the last record was in July of 2024.

We played at the Zebulon in Los Angeles, and as we went back through the tapes of those recordings, the tape starts up. The first thing you hear is someone close to the mic asking a friend at the show, “How you been?”

All of us were like, well, this has to be somehow in the album. At first, Jeremiah was pushing for it to be the first song, when the tape starts up, it goes: How you been? Then we slam right into a song.

It didn’t wind up being the first track on the song. It’s on the B side of the LP, but that little fragment is in there. So we just liked it and it struck us as interesting. It was the first thing we had, since everyone was busy.

I don’t even live in Los Angeles; I reside in upstate New York in the Hudson Valley. So we really don’t get together that often, except to play these shows. “How have you been?” also served as a question because a lot is going on, and it could be good or bad. So it’s both like a statement and a question.

How did the name Small Medium Large originate?

It’s a bit of riff on that, but it came because when we first got together as a group, we didn’t know we were getting together as a band at all. I lived in LA for three and a half years before the pandemic came in 2021. I decided to move back to my origin, New York. But when we visited LA, we got a chance to play a few shows together.

SML was determined from the structure of the live shows. Jeremiah and Greg had booked a couple of nights at ETA, a bar venue in LA where Jeff Parker’s record was made. Then Josh and Anna, who joined the quartet, played there a million times. So it was a hometown spot for everybody.

The first night, Josh, Greg, and Jeremiah played as a trio (Small). The next night, I came to play and then formed a quartet (Medium). Then about six months later, I came back to LA and we did two nights in a row as a quintet (Large). We established the original idea and ethos of the band, allowing us to be modular and play in different formats.

Then we even have the XL (Xtra Large) format when we invite guests to join us. Since then, there have been some instances of quartet and some trio, but it’s becoming more of a quintet for the final form.

Pitchfork observed that SML “might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter”. If SML is defined by this liminal space between genres — kosmiche, proto-techno, new-jazz- how do you collectively define the spirit of SML’s music, and how does the International Anthem label partnership allow you the freedom to reject easy categorization?

I think the Pitchfork quote might not matter, really. We all come from different musical spaces, bringing a variety of experiences and passions, like a five-way Venn diagram with overlapping circles. We all have these overlapping places, and some places don’t overlap as much. As a collective, many different influences come together, and the nature of the music is that we’re improvising every time.

Those influences are coming together in a way that makes us not discuss the music very much. In fact, for the first year and a half, we avoided discussing it. We just really liked to go on stage, plug in, and play. So there’s not necessarily a structure to the organization or the combination of all the different influences; it’s more organic than that.

For International Anthem, they’re just really supportive and fantastic facilitators. Scotty, one of the label heads of International Anthem, was at the first show we played together. From that, he knew the set was being recorded and insisted that we release the stuff.

The normal flow of a band is to record the material and then decide which label to release it on. But with International Anthem, we knew we had an offer to release the music right after we played our first show together. We’re just able to take that momentum and move forward with it quickly.

Photo by David Haskell

Your debut was intimately tied to the irreplaceable physical space of ETA, a site essential to the burgeoning West Coast improvised scene. With ETA now closed, How You Been was recorded across multiple cities. How did losing that consistent, physical crucible influence the creative energy for the second album? Did the geographical distance necessitate a greater reliance on the studio as the new, distributed “venue”?

The process was quite similar to the first album. Our self-titled album was recorded in ETA by an engineer named Bryce Gonzalez, and he is a genius. He has a company called Highland Dynamics, where he builds his own compressors and other audio racks. He has a custom-made portable tape recorder to record all the shows at ETA. For the first record, since all the material came from that source, a unified spatial sound is present in those recordings.

ETA is a tiny space where the band is all shoved against the wall. It’s a very intimate place for us. But for this new record, Bryce recorded several tracks, including our first single, “Taking Out The Trash,” at another venue in LA called the Zebulon, which was larger than ETA. This makes the new record energy slightly larger than the previous one.

So, the second single, Chicago Four, was out like two days ago. A more analog synth lead rather than the first single, Taking Out The Trash, a more constant groove from you. How does this track reveal your approach as a hyperrealist? Can you detail a moment on how you’ve been, where the studio composition, the intense editing, sampling, and arranging created a structure or sound that was conceptually impossible to achieve in the live improvised moment?

Taking Out The Trash is the piece I edited together, and it’s mainly like a run-of-the-mill live performance where we cut one piece here and there and put it all together. It’s less manufactured and more of an edited representation of the live performance. Then, for the Chicago Four, Jeremiah mainly edits for the arrangement. It’s the way the track was recorded; it was multi-tracked by Dave Chicago. He was able to take stems (the multi-track recording) and cut them into smaller pieces. All the instruments, such as the drums, bass, and synths, are in a shorter loop, forming a structure by setting a sequence with those smaller sections.

Then there’s a synth melody added by Josh in the live settings. In these settings, Jeremiah is a synth player, but he’s not doing any of the melody, focusing primarily on modular percussive synthesis. But for the Chicago Four, it was calling for more of a melodic contour. That was something that was added after the fact, which wasn’t performed live. We took these really great live performances and structured them into a three-minute song using this editing approach.

With five of you as producers, how do you decide which moments from a performance become the foundation for a song? Like, who’s going to organize, edit, or arrange the tracks?

We’re less organized than you might think. We all had our own process for listening, taking those files, and bringing them into whatever editing software we used. Most of us use Ableton, and one person uses Pro Tools. So I might scan through, listen through, and remember a moment that I thought was really cool in the live performance, and try to find that moment as you’re listening. As time goes by and through further listening, interesting parts are often found months after the recording happened. Then, going back in and having this sort of visceral response to remembering something that happened was really cool.

Talking about Indonesia, do you have a favorite artist, musical composition, or percussion that you have encountered before?

I’m not good with names necessarily, but I’m a big fan of Balinese gamelan. I like Javanese gamelan as well, but for me, the Balinese one is very exciting music, just from a percussive standpoint. I also love Rindik, the bamboo percussion instrument. Actually, two years ago, I was in Indonesia for three weeks. I did a residency in Pontianak, Solo, and Bali. In Bali, I was mainly in Ubud and got to take a drum lesson with the great percussionist Putu Septa, who gave me a Kendang lesson. I bought the Kendang and it’s here in my home.

Every member of SML maintains a highly successful, active career outside this quintet. As a group of five prolific composers/producers, how do you balance the collective vision with the powerful individual voices? How does SML ensure it is never just the sum of its famous parts, but a truly integrated, new organism whose unique identity justifies the time commitment required from five artists?

It isn’t very easy to get us all together. We haven’t really toured in the classic way bands tour, where they get in a van and go on the road for two to three weeks. The structure of us getting together to play shows is that we have a booking agent to book shows for us, and we all adjust our schedules and availabilities once the dates are available.

We don’t really follow the traditional Jazz structure of soloistic playing. It’s a very ensemble group playing almost all the time. There are some moments where Josh Johnson, the saxophonist, might take a lead because he’s the melodic player. But we don’t have any big solo moments. Everyone in the band is such a great, sensitive, thoughtful musician in the way they’re approaching their role in the band. It’s a cohesive feeling, so it has a sound and feels like what we’ve been developing through live performance only.

SML has never had a rehearsal and never had a recording session in the studio. We only played music live in front of people, and this is rare.

You guys already have tour dates for the new album, right?

We’ve got a busy schedule in November and December. We’ve got dates going out for like a year in advance, but they’re scattered and not filled yet. It’s like an album release tour.

Where do you see SML going next sonically, conceptually, and collectively? Will this project keep on evolving through documentation of live improvisation or a more structured one for the next phase?

Improvisations are part of the fun, and we’re likely going to keep playing together and following the music. It’s funny to name this record How You Been, because my answer to your question is just like however we’ve been. That’s what the new album will be, how we’ve been, you know.

Last question, how have you been personally?

I’ve been good despite how f**ed up things feel out in the world: all the inequality, the genocide in Palestine, and the utter dysfunction of our government. We’re living in a very, very interesting time where we’re approaching a sort of fascist government in our country, and in a lot of countries also.

It’s a very scary and sad time. I’ve also read somewhere that for the first time in these last decades, more countries around the world are beefing up their militaries and getting more weapons. A lot of that has to do with the coming resource scarcity due to climate change. Anyway, it’s important to note how scary things are.

On a personal level, I’m pretty good. I have a new kitten who’s so cute and bringing me lots of joy. I’m like a cat dad now. Been making a lot of music that feels really good with a lovely small community here in upstate New York, where there are a lot of really outstanding musicians that I get to work with, and of course doing this SML thing. I’ve also been teaching drums, really love doing this. So I’m good, despite it all, you know.

Photo by Jacob Blickenstaff