Two by The Outskirts–Sort Of: Orbital,The Outskirts and Marta Warelis (1/2)

By Brian Earley

Disc One

I remember sitting in the audience with my wife at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in the spring of 2013. We were listening to The Engines, it was a cool April evening, and the band’s signature combination of spontaneity and precision was sharp that night.

I don’t wish to descend into nostalgia here, but I find myself thinking frequently about Dave Rempis’s old band recently as I have acquainted myself with his latest album for Aerophonic Records: Orbital. Orbital is not a new album by The Engines, but it isnew material from saxophonist Rempis, drummer Frank Rosaly, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, a band that titled themselves The Outskirts, and played together from 2007-2009, smack in the middle of the years the Engines were active. While The Engines released a handful of recordings, The Outskirts released exactly zero. In fact, if it weren’t for Rempis’s now legendary COVID era 15-week, 15-livestream, 15-album release series we would not have access to any recorded evidence of The Outskirts at all.

On July 1, 2020 Dave took to the internet to perform solo and announce the release of the album You Deserve To Dance by the Outskirts, a recording he tells the audience that “never saw the light of day” because the original “multitrack files that allow you to mix a record were lost in a terrible hard drive accident.” The band, however, was given a rough stereo mix that allowed Rempis, over a decade later, to release the music. That night on the livestream, Dave did not perform any songs by The Outskirts, but he did play “Four Feet of Slush,” song four on The Engines album Wire and Brass reviewed at the time by The Free Jazz Collective.

“Four Feet of Slush,” it turns out, is the very first song on Orbital . Followers of Dave Rempis’s music will likely find this shocking as, first, Rempis, who pushes so urgently forward in the moment, performs songs from his past, and second, a Dave Rempis album contains songs,written-out songs. I mean, Dave never does this. His bands collaborate spontaneously, improvise live, sometimes for hours, and these works get recorded and Dave releases some of them on Aerophonic Records, often with the help of engineer Dave Zuchowski, artist Lasse Marhaug and others.

And The Engines songs do not stop there. Listeners will recognize “Cascades,” “Hover,” “Strafe,” and while it is not listed among the track titles, “Going Dutch,” a deep track from a 2015 digital only Engines album titled Green Knights. “Going Dutch,” found here on “Strafe-Glass Part 1” however, reminds me of early Ornette Coleman albums, if Sonny Rollins were the front man with the flexible time and forward swinging of Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden. Or, more aptly, the tune reminds me of the playing of still another Rempis band from the early aughts: Triage. In fact, the one non-Engines song on this performance is “Glass,” a tune recorded by Triage on 2003’s twenty minute cliff.

Orbital is far from reactive or sentimental, however. The trio takes these songs and makes something new and strange out of them. See, for example, the 8:25 mark of “Strafe,” when Dave and Frank explore improvised atmospheric sounds, more searching than swinging. But Ingo, Rosaly, and Rempis honestly sound like they are having a blast on this record and, given a thematic basis for mood and timbre, the group launches ahead, driving, laughing, and transforming these old tunes.

If you are anything like me, you would probably rather forget all about 2020, and on the Outskirts release stream from that July, before playing “Four Feet of Slush,” Dave quips the song applies to the time: “Let’s call it ‘Four Feet of Shit,’ how about that?” But those livestreams and the accompanying releases raised thousands of dollars for working musicians, and honestly helped me to stay afloat during that period of uncertainty. The past, even without nostalgia, can light up the present, as do my fond memories of the April concert in Philadelphia. So, although we may be walking through four feet of shit again in 2026, The Outskirts have arrived to provide the soundtrack one more time and to gift us a little warmth where there was none before.

Orbital can be purchased artist direct at https://www.aerophonicrecords.com/catalog.