Booker Stardrum gets a track called “The Drums.” With most bands that might be an ominous warning about a solo. SML make it one half of a forty-eight-minute album, with “Roundabouts” occupying the other side. Five musicians get the time to work something out together; the recording keeps the whole stretch.
Spontaneous Music Live was recorded during the Los Angeles quintet’s December 2025 Zebulon residency and released by International Anthem on June 26. Bryce Gonzales recorded and mixed it straight to stereo analog tape. Anna Butterss plays bass, Jeremiah Chiu synthesizer, Josh Johnson saxophone, Gregory Uhlmann guitar, and Stardrum drums. It is a small enough group for one person’s decision to alter everybody else’s evening.
Small Medium Large and How You Been also began with live recordings, which the band then cut and rearranged. Spontaneous Music Live retains the complete pieces. That changes what the release documents: the players’ transitions and pauses stay alongside the passages they might otherwise have chosen for a shorter edit.
Pitchfork’s Sam Goldner singled out Butterss’ bass and the uneven five-beat pattern of Roundabouts. Following that pattern gives the long performance a recognisable structure. An unbroken recording does not mean that nobody is organising the music; it leaves the listener more time to follow how the players do it together.
A film of The Drums is available through SML TV. The record itself asks for forty-eight minutes and preserves how those minutes were used at Zebulon. After two albums shaped by later editing, that is a consequential choice. We get the passages between the obvious arrivals too, which lets the collective decisions be followed rather than simply presented as results.