SML - How You Been

SML’s second album pushes their shape-shifting sound into sharper focus. Built from recordings captured across a run of shows in late 2024 and early 2025, How You Been takes the band’s fully improvised performances and rebuilds them in the studio with the same collective mindset that defines their live chemistry.

The result is a high-definition version of SML: grooves that bubble up out of thin air, synth patterns locking into unexpected rhythms, and sax, bass, guitar, and percussion weaving in and out like they’re following the same unspoken compass. Tracks swing from tightly wound and percussive (“Chicago Four,” “Taking Out the Trash”) to spacious and atmospheric (“Brood Board SHROOM,” “Plankton”), but everything carries that sense of five musicians trusting their instincts completely.

SML sits at the center of a busy, cross-pollinating Los Angeles scene, and you can hear that community spirit in the music. There’s jazz, ambient, post-rock, and dance-not-dance. It's the sound of a group refining its own language in real time.

If their debut hinted at something new forming, How You Been is where it lands. Confident, searching, and impossible to pin down. A must if you’ve been following the current wave of forward-thinking LA players or just want to hear improvisation turned into something bold and immediate.

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