CD version. Rouge is the first album that Louis Sclavis made for ECM, recorded in 1991 and released in March 1992. The French clarinettist and saxophonist leads a quintet that works at the meeting point of jazz and chamber music, with pieces that change direction without warning inside very disciplined arrangements. His exchanges with violinist Dominique Pifarély stand at the front of the band, and with this record both established themselves as original voices of European improvised music.

The quintet recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in September 1991, with Manfred Eicher producing and Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer. Sclavis plays clarinets and soprano saxophone, Pifarély violin, François Raulin piano and synthesizer, Bruno Chevillon bass and Christian Ville drums. Sclavis and Pifarély had worked together since 1985, and in 1992 they went on to form an acoustic quartet that also included Chevillon. Sclavis wrote most of the ten pieces, Raulin contributed Kali la nuit and Reeves, and Pifarély Moment donné, while One is a joint piece by the two front-line players.

The music is varied in texture and often closer to written composition than to jazz blowing. In Nacht, Chevillon's bass and Ville's drums push the ensemble towards a darker, freer kind of playing. Raulin's Reeves leans on repetition in a way that recalls minimalism, with Pifarély's violin carrying much of the energy. Les bouteilles is the most eclectic track, and the ten-minute Face Nord unfolds like a piece of film music, moving through a series of contrasting episodes. Behind the soloists, Raulin's piano often lays down a fine, glittering background.

ECM has since described Sclavis and Pifarély as two of the most strikingly original voices of the European improvising scene, and both returned to the label many times. In a retrospective of ECM's 1992 releases, Deutsche Grammophon noted that Pifarély and Chevillon make the listener take notice on Rouge. Writing for ECM Reviews in 2012, Tyran Grillo heard "a group whose unity betrays an innocence honed to a galactic edge". He linked Les bouteilles to the worlds of John Surman, Steve Reich and Pat Metheny.

This CD is the 2019 reissue in ECM's Touchstones series, which returns key albums of the catalogue to print in card sleeves with their original artwork. Rouge was first released in 1992 as ECM 1458, with cover photographs by Guy Le Querrec.