Label Description: SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann.
Their debut album ‘Small Medium Large’ began as a collection of long form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park, Los Angeles venue ETA. Unfortunately, this major development site for the burgeoning new West Coast jazz & improvised music sound closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023.
The venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker’s 2022 album ‘Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy’, was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are part of Parker’s quartet that held down a regular gig at ETA since the venue’s early days (and hence thoroughly documented, heard on Parker’s album). ‘Small Medium Large’ was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML across their various home studios.
While editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new idea (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven’s output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero / Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like ‘In a Silent Way’, ‘On The Corner’, and ‘Get Up With It’. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto-trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay’s re-assembly technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of polyrhythmic floating patterns (a la Susumu Yokota), and the result is a truly innovative take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmented with live instrumentation that never loses that elusive human sway.
‘Small Medium Large’ is a sublime assemblage of circulatory grooves and textural anomalies, at different moments recalling the synth-laced improvisations of Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, the jagged dance punk of Essential Logic, the rhythmic revelry of Fela Kuti, the low-end elasticity of Parliament/Funkadelic, or the glitchy dub techno of Pole. Taken in totality, the album captures a euphoric creative synchronicity between some of today’s most exciting musicians.
All music composed by Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, Gregory Uhlmann. Performed live by SML.
Anna Butterss – Electric Bass Jeremiah Chiu – Synthesizers, Live-sampling, Aux Percussion Josh Johnson – Saxophone, Electronics Booker Stardrum – Drums, Percussion Gregory Uhlmann – Guitar, Effects
Engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales at ETA, Los Angeles (October 12–13 2022 & April 8–9 2023). Overdubs by SML (2024).
Produced by Jeremiah Chiu & SML. Mixed by Dave Vettraino & SML. Sequenced by Scott McNiece & SML. Mastered by David Allen.
Cover art by Miranda Javid. Insert photos by Brian Guido. Layout by Jeremiah Chiu.
Label Description: Two decades ago, an all-star assembly of Chicago improvisers started a new band, drawing its name from an 1841 book by Charles Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions. With weekly gigs at a spot in Chicago called Hotti Biscotti, Jim Baker, Mars Williams, Brian Sandstrom, and Steve Hunt honed their sound, which could be ferocious or impressionistic or diffuse, as they moment required. After a couple years, the quartet moved to a regular Monday session at Beat Kitchen, where they have maintained their weekly residency for more than fifteen years. Williams was from time to time called away on tour, frequently enough that the band invited another horn player, the venerable Edward Wilkerson Jr., to substitute. This inevitably led to quintet convenings with both Williams and Wilkerson, the likes of which are now legend. Without question, although they have only released two previous records, EPD is one of the signal ensembles of Chicago creative music.
Mars Williams (1955-2023) had been diagnosed with late-stage cancer when EPD booked a concert at Elastic Arts Foundation at the end of August, 2023. Williams, who lived less than three months more, was on the bill. Nobody expected him to play the way he did. More than an honorary appearance, this was Mars at the top of his game, playing, as it were, for his life. With Sandstrom switching between bass, trumpet, and electric guitar, Wilkerson doubling on saxophone and clarinet as well as oud and didgeridoo, Baker on ARP synthesizer and piano as well as violin, and Hunt on all sorts of percussion, Williams’ table of toys and his blazing soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones were in perfect company – a band that could freely improvise open structures and instantly compose unforeseen suites, while maintaining a level of intensity and intrigue on par with the saxophonist’s mastery. Long term relationships extending outside this group, including those with NRG Ensemble, Mars Williams’ Ayler Xmas projects, as well as a variety of ad hoc and shorter lived amalgamations, made this one of the most fertile environments for these players, and this final quintet bore the marks of a classic concert. Which it was.
Fortunately, Dave Zuchowski was there to brilliantly document it in all its two-set glory. Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present the entire concert on two CDs, as the fourth installment of CvsD’s Mars Archive series, with a cover painting by Timothy Howe.
Mars Williams: sopranino, soprano, alto and tenor saxophones; zither; whistles; electronic devices; toys Edward Wilkerson, Jr: tenor saxophone; clarinet and alto clarinet; didgeridoo; oud; voice Jim Baker: piano; analog synthesizer; viola Brian Sandstrom: bass; electric guitar; six-string electric bass; electronics Steve Hunt: drums and percussion; glockenspiel; miscellaneous paraphernalia
Recorded at Elastic Arts Foundation, August 29, 2023. Recorded and mixed by David Zuchowski (davidzuchowski.com). Mastered at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, by Alex Inglizian. Interior photograph by Mark Lind. Cover art by Timothy Howe. CD design by David Khan-Giordano.
All music improvised by Extraordinary Popular Delusions; copyright 2023; all rights reserved.
Label Description: Recorded Live at Sweat Records in Miami, December 29 2024. Back cover polaroid by Lia Miranza Hernandez Avendano. Live Audience Recording by Guillermo (Lia’s Dad). Master and design by Lasse Marhaug.
After making some bump music for the first season, I decided to try making something more coherent for future episodes.
I’m still not great at ableton but I learned a lot doing this one. The two tribute tracks involved attempts to reproduce music that inspired me as a means of learning the software better.
The North Carolina Piedmont-based trio of Setting bring together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative, explorative mindsets from groups such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations. Multi-instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of ease and wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Dedicated improvisers with years working together, the band has developed their own idiosyncratic vernacular and sense of flow. Setting’s self-titled album is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures.
Setting harnesses the euphoria of communal creation. “This is one of the most joyous albums I’ve made with other musicians. It felt like we were all in the slipstream,” notes Fennelly. Bowles adds: “Making this is maybe the easiest thing in my life; it’s not struggle music. This collaboration feels like it’s just coming out of the air, like it’s breathing.” Built on long exploratory sessions, the trio developed their own syntax and an ability to shift in new directions with finer and finer grains of detail. The pieces of Setting use that shared understanding of each other as players and the electric spontaneity of improvisation as a framework for more elaborate, impactful compositions in the studio. Westerlund elaborates, “When you keep playing together show after show, things take a different shape. The elements can be subtler and more specific, and there are more references of past performances and past discoveries to draw from.”
Fennelly’s synth programming acts as a guiding light, bending pieces into dynamic arcs and imbuing them with swirling hues, while rhythmic push-and-pull between Westerlund and Bowles lends an elasticity to each track’s warp and weft. Their working methods have found a kindred traveler in Adam McDaniel from Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, whose engineering and production work forms an indispensable piece of the album’s dynamism and luminescent fidelity. “Heard a Bubble” fittingly froths up from ostinatos that increasingly layer with minutely evolving patterns, evoking a tender kosmiche over Saharan-style rhythms. Syncopated grooves dance across the stereo spectrum on “Gum Bump” before synthesizers erupt into heaps of magma. The floating drone of “What Kind of Fish is a Turtle” offers a minimalist respite before the steady, lyrical “Ribbon of Moss” wraps itself in a dusky haze. The ensemble’s powerful use of momentum reaches its zenith with the freight train “Derring-do,” as piano zither and banjo apply tension to ever-ratcheting drums and flares of warped chordal organ. Across the five pieces, the trio make deft use of their seemingly infinite palettes to mold landscapes that appear familiar at first glance before glowing with vibrant new colors as the whole picture sets in.
The eponymous album from Setting is the product of three intuitive players and deep listeners, artists who use those skills to create transformative music. The trio shirk any broader categorizations, as their unique dynamic pieces are alight with arrangements urgent and smoldering, patient and emotive.
All tracks composed, improvised, and performed by Setting: Nathan Bowles – Keyboards, Banjos, Tapes, Percussion Jaime Fennelly – Synthesizers Joe Westerlund – Drums, Percussion, Metallophones, Zither
Produced by Setting & Adam McDaniel. Engineered and mixed by Adam M. At Drop of Sun Studios, Asheville, NC, January – March 2025. Mastered & cut by Josh Bonati. Artwork & Layout by Timothy Breen / Field of Grass. Thanks & Love to Brittany, Katie, Corrie, Adam, Emily & DoS crew. Published by Ponderous Djinn (ASCAP); Aqui The Bushwick (ASCAP) administered by Domino Publishing; Squinting Sparrow (BMI) administered by Rough Trade Publishing.
“Instante” is the debut recording by the trio formed by José Lencastre (saxophones), based in Lisbon, and Clara Lai (piano) and Àlex Reviriego (electronics), both based in Barcelona.
Their music transports us to new and unexpected sonic spaces. The more organic sounds of the piano and saxophone both contrast with and symbiotically merge with the artificiality of electronics. The electronics place the improvisational style of the piano and saxophone in new perspectives. As with the sound of these instruments, the breath, the spaces, the timbral landscapes, the harmonies, and the natural harmonics, among other elements, move the electronics away from more typical noise or electronic territories, inviting us to stylistically recontextualize each of them, individually and collectively.
Rooted in free improvisation and embedded in a continuously evolving contemporary language, the three instruments meet, diverge and explore, through attentive listening, how far this interaction can expand their respective instrumental possibilities, in the pursuit of a single and unique sound.
This album is dedicated to the ever-renewed experience of being present, in connection with each instant.
Àlex Reviriego – electronics Clara Lai – piano José Lencastre – alto and tenor saxophones
Clara Lai and José Lencastre recorded at Louva-a-Deus, Lisboa, by Afonso Cabral on May 31st 2024. Àlex Reviriego recorded at Premià de Mar on June 26th 2024
Mixed by Jan Valls Miralles Mastered by Ary at Toolate Studio
Graphic Design by Tània Gumbau Cover photo by José Lencastre
All music by Àlex Reviriego, Clara Lai and José Lencastre
Improvised and recorded by Levi at home, April–September 2025. Mastered by Andrew Weathers. Cover photo: Pacific Bobtail Squid (Rossia pacifica) by Bill Horist, Salish Sea, 2024.
Thank you: Meghan and Rowan, Eric Acosta, Bill Horist, Leanna Keith, Kate Olson, Scott Schaffer.
I stood on top of the mountain and looked out over the landscape. It was so beautiful that my chest hurt. The light vibrated, time stood still, and the contours dissolved for a moment. Everything had changed; I felt it then. I took their little hands so as not to lose contact with the ground. Then we ran down the mountain, scraping our knees. Still, we didn’t make it. You had already put away all the nautical charts, loosened the moorings and steered out among the skerries. Mum stood waving from the jetty. You were alone, you wanted it that way. It was to be just you in the boat this time. I called out to you. I think you heard me and felt less lonely. We couldn’t carry each other anymore, no matter how hard we tried. We washed our wounds on the shore and scattered tears and rose petals in the bay. The children laughed and searched for treasures under water. We called to them that it was time to come up. They were cold, and we hugged them to warmth. One ran ahead, the other up on our shoulders. Up the mountain, our mountain. [1]
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In 2020 Anna Högberg put her widely celebrated band Anna Högberg Attack on hold, retraining as a nurse whilst continuing a solo practice and playing in other groups. With Ensamseglaren she makes a spectacular return with her own ensemble — this time a double sextet — performing an album length suite of new music written in dedication to her late father — the titular ‘ensamseglaren’ pictured on the LP cover as a young boy. (ensam in Swedish can mean both alone and lonely, seglaren = the sailor).
Shot through with renewed energy and a brutally affective emotional punch, Högberg’s formal experimentation opens up vibrant possibilities for the assembled musicians to let loose with some of their wildest and most ecstatic playing on record.
Högberg’s contention with grief leans into collective joy as method of mourning — the big band as extended family; where bonds are made through a shared experience of being together. Where everyone gets to be themselves without expectations of who they should be or what they can do. It’s a radical commitment to care — of her self and others — that animates and unifies this suite of music’s radical dynamics and variations in colour: from whisper-quiet textural intensity to harrowing distortion and double drum chaos; raucous and solemn song.
—
Throughout history, humans have had different images of the transition between life and death. Imagine standing on the seashore on a summer evening and seeing a beautiful vessel being prepared for departure. The sails are hoisted. The evening breeze comes, the sails fill and the boat glides out onto the open sea. You follow it with your eyes as it heads towards the sunset. It gets smaller and smaller, until it finally disappears as a tiny dot on the horizon. Then you hear someone next to you say, ‘Now they have left us.’
Left us for what? The fact that they got smaller and smaller and finally disappeared is only how we see it. In reality, they are just as big and beautiful as when they were here, lying on the beach by our side.
Just as you hear that voice say ‘Now they have left us’, there may be someone on another beach who sees them appear on the horizon, someone waiting to welcome them when they reaches their new port. [2] credits released October 3, 2025
Anna Högberg Alto Saxophone Elin Forkelid Tenor Sax Niklas Barnö Trumpet Maria Bertel Trombone Per Åke Holmlander Tuba Dieb13 Turntables Alex Zethson Piano Finn Loxbo Guitar + Saw Gus Loxbo Double Bass + Saw Kansan Zetterberg Double Bass Anton Jonsson Drums Dennis Egberth Drums
All Music by Anna Högberg (ncb/Stim). Recorded by Niklas Lindström and Calle Gustavsson at Atlantis Studios, Stockholm: 15-16 October 2024. Mixed by Niklas Lindström at Atlantis Studios. Mastered by Andreas [Lupo] Lubich. Innersleeve Photos by Tina Axelsson. Cover Photographer Unknown. Design by John Chantler. This Release has Received Financial Support from Kulturrådet, the Swedish Arts Council. c + p 2025. This lp is Fönstret—16.
Notes
Fönstret is a division of the Edition Festival for Other Music, the annual festival initiated and organised by John Chantler which ran from 2016—2024. Across its history the edition festival has presented work by, among many many others: Okkyung Lee, Ellen Fullman, Peter Brötzmann, Sarah Hennies, Terre Thaemlitz, Marginal Consort, Anthony Braxton, Annea Lockwood, Ellen Arkbro, Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat and Catherine Christer Hennix.
Fönstret is the festival’s outlet for publishing new work and surfacing material from the festival archives across books, cds, LPs and digital media and includes releases by Marja Ahti, [Ahmed], Lisa Ullén, Daniel M Karlsson, Isak Hedtjärn, Finn Loxbo and Kommun.
[1] Anna Högberg’s original Swedish: “Jag stod på toppen av berget och såg ut över landskapet som var så vackert att det gjorde ont i bröstet. Ljuset vibrerade, tiden stannade och konturerna var för en stund upplösta. Allting var förändrat, jag kände det då. Jag tog era små händer för att inte mista kontakten med marken. Sen sprang vi nedför berget, skrubbsår på knäna. Ändå hann vi inte fram. Du hade redan lagt undan alla sjökort, lossat förtöjningarna och styrt ut bland kobbarna. Mamma stod och vinkade från bryggan. Du var ensam, du ville ha det så, det skulle bara vara du i båten den här gången. Jag ropade efter dig, jag tror att du hörde och att du kände dig mindre ensam. Vi kunde inte bära varandra längre. Hur mycket vi än försökte. Vi tvättade våra skrubbsår i strandkanten och strödde tårar och rosenblad i viken. Barnen skrattade och letade efter skatter under vattenytan. Vi ropade på dem att det var dags att komma upp. De frös och vi värmde dem i våra famnar. Den ena sprang i förväg, den andra upp på axlarna. Uppför berget, vårat berg.”
[2] This text is adapted from a translation of a text ‘Det Sista Steget’ (the last stage) read by Anna’s aunt (a priest within the Swedish Church) at her father’s funeral:
Vi människor har i alla tider haft olika bilder av övergången mellan liv och död. Många beskriver den som en resa över en flod eller ett hav till det land vi ännu inte känner.
Tänk dig att du står vid havsstranden en sommarkväll och ser en vacker farkost som förbereds för avfärd. Seglen hissas. När kvällsbrisen kommer fylls seglen och båten glider ut på det öppna havet. Du följer den med blicken när den far mot solnedgången. Den blir mindre och mindre, för att till slut försvinna som en liten prick vid horisonten. Då hör du någon vid din sida säga: “Nu har hon lämnat oss”.
Lämnat oss for vad? Detta att hon blivit allt mindre och till slut försvunnit är ju bara som du ser det. I själva verket är hon lika stor och vacker som när hon låg vid stranden.
Just när du hör rösten som säger att hon lämnat oss, finns det kanske någon på en annan strand som ser henne dyka upp vid horisonten, någon som väntar på att få ta emot just henne när hon når sin nya hamn.
The music of this trio is an ongoing conversation between three women about life as it unfolds between artistic practice and daily routines. Compassioned conversations about being someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s partner, someone’s friend seamlessly float into the musical sphere, where words and emotions are transformed into pitches, harmonies, rhythms and artistic gestures.
Three strong artists from the creative music scene of northern Europe has formed a trio that feeds from the compassioned relationship between its members. Danish Anne Efternøler is a desired trumpet player on the Scandinavian scene, while German Johanna Borchert´s distinct approach to the prepared piano has given her a prominent place between the heaviest pianoplayers(sic) of her generation. For more than 25 years vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Maria Laurette Friis has been pushing the musical borders leaving a remarkable contribution to the field of abstract music.
Maria Laurette Friis – vocals Johanna Borchert – prepared piano and vocals Anne Efternøler – trumpet, flute and objects
Track 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 Recorded at Hobby Horse Studio, Copenhagen, January 10. 2022 By Simon Mariagaard. Track 2, 4, 7, 8 Recorded live at KoncertKirken, Copenhagen, July 5 2023 By Mads Madsen. All music By Anne Efternøler, Maria Laurette Friis, Johanna Borchert.
Music For The Rest Of Us 