This album consists of two extended tracks featuring unedited, improvised performances, recorded live during the band’s three-night residency at Zebulon in Los Angeles in December 2025. These sessions took place just a few weeks after the release of the band’s second album, *HOW YOU BEEN*. The recording and mixing were handled live on stereo analog tape by engineer and “magician” Bryce Gonzalez, known for his beautiful live recordings of the Jeff Parker ETA Quartet.
Through *HOW YOU BEEN* and their 2024 debut album *SMALL MEDIUM LARGE* (both of which were heavily edited and post-produced), SML has established a reputation for their meticulously crafted sound. In these works, “editing” as a medium takes center stage; the pieces are constructed by carefully selecting and editing the most compelling fragments.
However, the source material for both of these albums consists entirely of live recordings—improvisations that unfold in long, undulating waves of raw groove. More importantly, every single one of the band’s performances to date has been performed as a complete improvisation in keeping with that spirit.
This duality can also be seen in artists who could be considered their ideological kin. For example, the lengthy, unrestrained performances on Can’s *Live in Paris 1973* contrast with the more compact *Future Days*, released the same year. Or consider the chaotic, high-speed funk of Miles Davis’s *Dark Magus* versus the thoroughly deconstructed structures found on *On the Corner* and *Big Fun*.
*Spontaneous Music Live* is a work that strips away this curatorial perspective and peels back the curtain on the editing process. What remains is the psychedelic realism of a band performing collective improvisation, existing in that very moment in the city of Los Angeles. It is music that, while fully present in the moment, unearths moments of discovery. There, each individual sound is scattered like stars between collective chaos and control, serving as fragments that could become future SML tracks. (From the label information)