Album Info

How You Been

By SML

Jazz - 2025

Jazz-ish quintet SML combines the funky elation of krautrock and Afrobeat with the playful side of modern electronic music. Think... more

Tracklist

1

Gutteral Utterance

1:17 min
2

Chicago Four

3:33 min
3

Taking out the Trash

4:22 min
4

Plankton

1:15 min
5

Chicago Three

3:37 min
6

Daves

3:32 min
7

Old Mytth

4:06 min
8

Stepping In / The Loop

4:56 min
9

Brood Board SHROOM

1:53 min
10

Odd Evens

1:57 min
11

How You Been

4:15 min
12

Moving Walkway

4:31 min
13

Mouth Words

4:38 min

About How You Been

Jazz-ish quintet SML combines the funky elation of krautrock and Afrobeat with the playful side of modern electronic music. Think whatever those old Keith Haring drawings must’ve been listening to, or an abstract sculpture in a public park wriggling to weird, colorful life. From the glitchy opening of “Gutteral Utterance” (whose subaquatic plinking sounds like a mid-’70s Brian Eno interlude), How You Been is a joy, mixing dense, polyrhythmic experiments with a sense of brightness that makes them feel approachable and light. It’s less luxury watch than expertly designed wind-up toy (“Chicago Four,” “How You Been”), punctuated by bits of ambience whose sweeping, quasi-orchestral quality calls back to 1930s cartoons (“Brood Board SHROOM”). Rigorous, fun, rigorously fun.