This was really a solo record made by a spontaneous group effort. Lots of people were involved besides the principal players.

There were additional musicians like Joe Higham.
It was so nice to have him. I also know him from Odex Protocole, where he played saxophone. For this record he played a bass clarinet and a doudouk (Armenian wind instrument) on two of the songs. Joe has a very intellectual way of looking at music, and it gave yet another angle to the production. The songs on this album are very simple, so we needed a bit of this interesting stuff… what we call the spices.
In When Angels Cry he makes such an amazing and beautiful mystical sound with the clarinet and the doudouk, that it enhances the whole song.
That's why we call him The Professor. We needed to have the professor's approval.

Pata N'Java, the brother of Maximin, plays percussion. I also call him The Vice President. He comes into the studio and asks “what do you want me to do?” After 30 minutes of discussion and two days in the studio, he has done what he has to do. Pata is not an average percussion player: he's amazing. He comes from Madagascar and he has all this different percussion that you don't find anywhere else. I needed him not only for his playing, but also for his sound. This Oriental, African stuff. Hopefully live we're also going to play with him.

The vocal harmony on the song Urban Gipsy was done by Nader Hamid, who had a special harmonica mic that he used to use in his band for vocals and I loved the sound. He dropped into the studio one day to loan me the mic, and instead of me doing those backing vocals, I just asked him to do it, and we kept the tracks.

Some backing vocals were done by Lala, Monique, & Belinda and then there were Nina, Marie-Ange & Chantal who were so much fun. I had worked with them before. One day they came into the studio and believe me, it was an experience. These girls had so many ideas. I only had to say "yes or no" to them, but their ideas were so great I could never say no.
But they're also very, very funny girls. They were just there doing hilarious imitations of well-known singers and stuff like that.

It was just really fun making this record. There was absolutely no pressure. The only pressure we had that we didn't have much money to spend on studio time. But this way we had time to reflect, cuz I recorded it in segments.

When recording with Maximin M'Java, we spent a lot of time listening to the takes over and over again. What was great about him was that he is actually an engineer in the true sense. He understood that the production was my personal vision, while he was always there to say something insightful when it was necessary.
I learned during the two projects where I worked with him (Urban Gipsy and Living Room), that you need to have a captain, who leads the project in the right direction, before it goes everywhere and gets lost.

Everybody that worked on this project was very honest and what they played was what represented them. They were proud of what they were playing. They put their soul into this record.