A Gorgeous Dispatch From the Extended SML-iverse

You have to be brave to improvise in a trio with no drums. Everything you play is exposed, without a churning rhythm to drown out false moves or keep a listener grooving along while you gather your thoughts. You might be tempted to fill the empty space with lots of notes, but that goes against the whole point of the sparse arrangement. Doing it well requires a nearly impossible combination of patience and decisive action. Play too much, too soon, and risk toppling the delicate edifice you and your collaborators are constructing. Play too little, too late, and the silence might swallow you. 

This is the fraught territory that guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and bassist Sam Wilkes explore on “Frica,” the lead single from their forthcoming album Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes, out March 14 on International Anthem. Uhlmann and Johnson are both members of the Los Angeles electro-minimalist-groove quintet SML, among many other projects. Wilkes is best known, to me at least, for his collaborations with a slightly more internet-fried school of L.A. virtuoso, including a modern-classic duo album with saxophonist Sam Gendel and regular contributions to the meme-funk band Knower. (His 2024 live album Iiyo Iiyo Iiyo was one of my favorite records of last year, but I encountered it too late to put it on the official list.)

In its opening bars, “Frica” could pass for a classic drumless trio in the vein of the Jimmy Giuffre 3, but it soon becomes clear that these three are up to something trickier. In the absence of actual percussion, everyone plays their instruments as if they were drums, emphasizing the hard frontal edge of each note, working primarily with rhythmic patterns rather than melodic phrases. As frequently happens in SML, there are moments when you can be fairly sure, but never quite positive, that the repetitions you’re hearing are digitally enforced; that at some point, someone went in with a sampler and started chopping things up and looping them. A stray thump—a muted bass string? the close-mic’ed click of a saxophone key?—becomes a slow-motion techno kick. Its pulses and the long gaps between them seem alternately to mark time and to suspend it, pushing the players forward or holding them still. 

For all their electronic augmentation, the players remain attuned to the possibilities of the trio format, the way it draws your attention close, making major events out of small changes of articulation and emphasis. The climax of “Frica” comes with the arrival of a looped and pitch-shifted saxophone about halfway through. In the full-bore jams of SML, this entrance might register only as another element in the barrage. Here, it comes down like winter light through a lace curtain into a mostly empty room, draping the scattered furnishings and making them softly glow.