Orbital documents the reunion of a band that you have probably had no chance to hear unless you lived in Chicago between 2007 and 2009. At that time bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, drummer Frank Rosaly, and saxophonist Dave Rempis all lived in Chicago, where they often played with each other in other bands. The trio played with reasonable frequency around town until Håker Flaten moved to Texas, but never released a proper recording. Their final concert was recorded with a CD in mind, but a hard drive mishap put the kibosh on that plan (the “lost” recording, You Deserve To Dance, was finally issued, in un-mixed form, as a download in 2020). Over the next decade and a half Håker Flaten returned to Norway and Rosaly moved to Amsterdam, but the trio kept performing together as 3/4 of the Rempis Percussion Quartet.
The notion to regather the Outskirts first came up as Rempis and Rosaly considered options for a March 2025 tour of Europe, and Rempis took the opportunity of its reformation to try something he hadn’t done in many years — compose. His main focus as an improviser and bandleader has been on playing totally improvised material that nonetheless attains cohesion, and the three have done just that quite successfully. So, their tour became an opportunity to do something new. They didn’t exactly work out a set of tunes. The material that Rempis brought in was rudimentary and modular, designed to be introduced at any point in a set by any member of the band. This is the system in effect on disc one of Orbital. The track lengths — 36:57, 20:42, and 17:02 — serve notice that this is, as is common for a Rempis release, a selection of large excerpts from concerts during which the ensemble develops ideas at length. But what happens within these expanses of time is a bit different. While Rempis is renowned for his forcefulness, he has always been willing to work a melody, and they materialize with frequency here. But they are worked over, repeatedly tested and tried, rather than simply worked from, as though the collective imagination here is being applied to what to do with something known rather than how to keep going. At a couple points, the same Don Cherry-ish theme pops up; at the beginning of “Cascades / Hover,” Rempis waxes slow and breathy, mining a vein of ballad knowledge that he usually saves for solo concerts. Music’s flex points are easy to recognize.
Hearing the Outskirts now is an opportunity to reflect on how the other participants have changed. Since moving to Europe, Rosaly has developed projects that bring him closer to his Latinx heritage and spent a lot less time freely improvising. Comparing his playing in Outskirts in 2025 to his playing with the trio in 2009 or the Rempis Percussion Quartet, his playing is more streamlined. He’s more inclined to keep an undisrupted beat going, but also more inclined to judiciously color it. Håker Flaten, on the other hand, has simply gotten better at everything he does, whether that’s adding harmonic poetry to a long Rempis line, nailing down the pulse while Rosaly goes exploring, or sculpt dramatic transformation from a big chunk of raw, splintered sound.
The second disc, on the other hand, is both something new and something old. Recorded early in the tour, it captures a night when the band ditched the book and just played. The instigation for this change of tack is the presence of a fourth musician, pianist Marta Warelis, who has worked extensively with both Håker Flaten and Rosaly, but had never shared a stage with Rempis before. On the first piece, which lasts over 41 minutes, the music starts out full-on. While Warelis is quite adept at contributing fragmentary phrases that leave space from everyone else, the music is still more dense. It also changes differently, often shifting when someone stops for a moment instead of when someone advances an idea. The second track, which is still quite generous at 28:14, feels like an ecosystem of coexisting, moving parts. At one point prepared piano and hand percussion bristle pulse-free, pitted by sound-chunks of unaltered piano while Håker Flaten scurries quietly through the action and Rempis hovers above it, winding and unwinding phrases.
One might ask, which system is better? Both yield excellent results that merit documentation. That, and the chance to hear the group with and without Warelis, justify the album’s generous size. Looking beyond methodology, Orbital is a case study in how artists can bring their individual changes into a collective dynamic.
Ada Rave /Marta Warelis — Peel / Mondo (Relative Pitch)
Freedom from, or freedom to, that is the question. When the word was first applied to jazz, it was mostly the former; free jazz rebelled against increasingly confining practices and expectations. But when Argentine sopranino and tenor saxophonist Ada Rave and Polish pianist Marta Warelis play together, it’s more a matter of the latter. Do they want to form a tune on the spot, or sink deep into a sonic texture? Rip it up, or wax reflective? The answer is yes. When they recorded this album in concert on June 3, 2024, the Amsterdam venue Splendor’s stage was a free zone where anything was permitted.
But these are players who sincerely reckon with the responsibility that accompanies such freedom. They have responsibilities to each other as people, and also to whomever listens to them. On “First Strawberries,” Rave’s tenor starts out pushing against the grain of Warelis’ lean, romantic melody. But she only pushes for a bit, long enough to generate some tension, and then she adopts a more congruent stance, a tad more bristly than Warelis, but sympathetically resonating with the pianist’s emotional energy.
Both players treat extended techniques less as sources of novelty or ends in themselves than as part of a big bag of resources that they are free to use as needed, but also obliged to use well. The combination of peppery, laceratingly high sopranino phrases and vertiginous, conventionally voiced piano lines during the latter moments of the title track are as thrilling as a tightrope dance. And on “Rain Into Flood,” the way slithery inside-piano glisses swarm puffs of air and furry tones simply makes sense. Similarly, resort to an Warelis and Rave are as committed to creating compelling outcomes as they are to enacting a process that is compelling to experience as it unfolds.
Abdou - Gouband - Warelis - Hammer, Roll, And Leaf
Hammer, Roll, and Leaf is an audacious exploration of sonic intimacy, collaboration, and the spaces between sound and silence. This collaborative effort between saxophonist Sakina Abdou, percussionist Toma Gouband, and pianist Marta Warelis feels less like a recording and more like a shared meditation, a soundscape that invites listeners into its vast, fluid architecture. Their collaborations…
