Kieloor Entartet Presents "The Red Light Fugue"
1995 · Unit Records (2) (UTR 4080 CD) · CD Album · Switzerland
Kieloor Entartet
Tracklist
- Fantasies3:21
- Carpe Diem3:37
- Crippled Waltz
- Cirque De La Solitude5:16
- Spanish Stars (Free Improvisation)0:41
- The Mid Of The Microwave8:00
- Aetas2:38
- Manege (Mix)2:49
Personnel & credits
- Karoline SchreiberArtwork
- Emanuel SchnyderBass
- Alfred ZimmerlinCello
- Lucas NiggliDrums, Percussion, Management [Bandcontact]
- Felix UtzingerElectric Guitar
- Jon PiguetEngineer [Live-Mix]
- Mathias KielholzGuitar [Guitars]
- Mathias GloorPiano, Keyboards
- Kieloor EntartetProducer, Presenter
- Martin PearsonRecorded By, Mixed By
- Christoph GrabSaxophone [Saxes]
- Michael GassmannTrumpet
- Dorothea SchürchVoice
- DJ Tron (5)Voice, Turntables, Noises
About this record
Reception
No dedicated critical review of "The Red Light Fugue" (Unit Records UTR 4080) surfaced on any jazz outlet — searches of AllMusic, All About Jazz (incl. Italia), JazzTimes, Down Beat, Musica Jazz, and Swiss/German/Italian press (jazz'n'more, jazzthing, Concerto) returned no album review. This is typical for a mid-1990s small Swiss free-jazz double CD. What exists is contextual rather than evaluative. The album is documented as a live double CD recorded during a four-day concert run at Jazzclub Uster in 1994, the band's third and final release before disbanding (~1995/96). Retailer/streaming listings (CadNor, Amazon, JioSaavn, Spotify) carry only metadata — track lists, runtime (~1h52m), personnel — with no descriptive or critical text. The band itself, not this specific record, carries the recognition (see recognition field). Online conversation around the title is essentially nonexistent beyond catalog and streaming entries.
Recognition
Recognition attaches to the band, not specifically to this album. Kieloor Entartet won first prize at the European Jazz Competition in Leverkusen (Germany) in 1990 (per Lucas Niggli's archive biography and Thise Gloor's bio). In 1994 the group received a "Werkjahr" grant of CHF 36,000 from the City of Zurich, covering the project period that produced this live double CD. The band performed at the Schaffhauser Jazzfestival (2. Festival, 23 May 1991, Kulturzentrum Kammgarn), with a recording archived at the Schweizerische Nationalphonothek (Swiss National Sound Archive). No award, festival prize, or academic notice tied specifically to "The Red Light Fugue" was found.
Background
Kieloor Entartet was a Swiss experimental new-jazz / progressive rock-jazz trio active roughly 1987-1996, built around Mathias "Thise" Gloor (trombone, keys), Mathias Kielholz (guitar) and Lucas Niggli (drums, percussion), with Emanuel Schnyder (bass) and a tentet expanding the live lineup; Michael Gassmann appears on trumpet (credited Appearance). "The Red Light Fugue" was their third record, released 1995 on Niggli's own Unit Records (UTR 4080), and was recorded live across a four-day concert series at Jazzclub Uster in 1994 (per Lucas Niggli's archive biography: "Viertägige Konzertreihe ... wo die neue Doppel-CD live mitgeschnitten wird"). The band name puns on "entartet" (degenerate), the Nazi-era "Entartete Musik" label, signaling its free/experimental stance. The album's concept draws on William S. Burroughs' 1981 novel "Cities of the Red Night": track titles include "The Cities of the Red Night," and the Burroughsian city-names Tamaghis, Waghdas and Ghadis, reframing the live free-improvisation set as a literary suite. Prior Kieloor Entartet releases: "No More Beer" (Ex Libris, 1990) and "A Good Dog Has a Day, a Bad One Might Just Have Two" (Unit, 1992). The group toured Switzerland, Russia and the Baltics. Niggli had earlier (1989) been a member of the Michael Gassmann Quartet, also documented on Unit Records — a long-standing collaborative thread connecting Gassmann to this circle.