Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0148 (December 2, 2025)

More later on this week; after all I am still searching for gainful employment (and will tell this to anyone in earshot), and need my faculties sharp for tomorrow.

SML How You Been LP (International Anthem)

“Not since Tortoise” heads, write your blurbs. SML’s second album, like their debut Small Medium Large from last year, finds the LA quintet – Anna Butterss on bass, Josh Johnson on sax, Jeremiah Chiu on synths, Gregory Uhlmann on guitar, and Booker Stardrum on ... drums – out on the road, obsessively recording every moment of their fusion-oriented electronic macro-jazz improvisations where they peak, and turning them around on the mixing desk until they come out nice. They sound confident up there, circle-locked into movement rhythms and sampler scrapes, loading on the FX and extensions in a way that suggests they took Tortoise’s “Why We Fight” and built a band around it, percussion as melody, synths as glue, guitar as electronics, sax as voice, bass reserved for the grooves. A real mover, even in the universe of International Anthem’s stable of spirit-galaxy jazz, five points to the star, forev and ev.