A transitional album can sometimes be a band's most exciting effort, representing fresh ideas, the taking on of new blood, or perhaps just the beginning of a door closing on one phase and opening on another. Orange Then Blue's double-CD opus While You Were Out is one such album, standing as a final document of the group's years as a Boston-based ensemble and presenting the first inkling of its soon-to-emerge status as an outlet for many of the top musicians on the New York downtown jazz scene. Led by drummer/composer George Schuller (son of Gunther), OTB started in 1984 as a group of young musicians who were receiving their jazz educations in Boston. By the time this fifth OTB album was recorded in 1992, the band was poised to shift operations to New York City under George Schuller's continued leadership. And as the decade progressed, bandmembers like reedmen Matt Darriau and Chris Speed, trumpeter Cuong Vu, and others would be leading their own New York-based bands, continuing to explore ideas they began investigating during their Boston days. Another notable presence on While You Were Out is trumpeter Dave Douglas, a musician who had left Boston for New York at around the same time that OTB was first formed. So when listening to While You Were Out today, one detects a distinct New York downtown flavor, even if Douglas was pretty much the only musician present who was starting to make his name in New York when the CD was recorded. Douglas' turbocharged large-ensemble arrangement of "Slow Boat to Mechanicsville," a piece heard in a quintet version on New and Used's Souvenir album, here features rich sonorities and harmonizations as well as opportunities for both fiery solo and group improvising.

1		Scatter
2		Kamikaze
3		Gankino Horo
4		While You Were Out...
5		Slow Boat to Mechanicsville
6		La Partida
7		Evanescent
8		Flypaper
9		Truth Is Marchin' In
10		Three Reels and an Air
11		Sequenz
12		While You Were Out... (Encore)