Live at Yoshiwara is exactly what the title says : a live album, in a place called Yoshiwara.
Except there are no venues called Yoshiwara. There is one infamous Yoshiwara district in Japan, which in turn lend its name to the depraved, ambiguous red-light district and club in Metropolis, the Fritz Lang's 1927 silent sci-fi movie.
For a long time, Camille Petit and myself were very interested in the slight frontier between existent and non-existent features in human's life ; dreams, for once ; memories ; and ghosts. That was that main interest that brought to life our double album Madeleine, which creates another soundtrack for Hitchcock's Vertigo, and gives space for the ghost that the movie gives life to, Madeleine. Madeleine really influences the characters in the movie, though she is not a real ghost, but merely an invention from a con-man.
This interest for non-existing but nevertheless present features is shown in the music Ghost Rhythms creates since its beginnings. Our tunes play on musical perceptions, unveiling a different comprehension of the music by adopting rhythmic deplacements, variations, and so on. In a word, our music plays with ghosts, music that might be, possibilities that might happen.
This record, Live at Yoshiwara, is no exception. We chose to make a live, but in a non-existing venue ; we created a space which exists but by name and recorded the music there, in front of a little audience. In the meantine, however, the music we made, the way we interpreted it, and the way we edited it, was influenced by the strong atmosphere surrounding Metropolis' Yoshiwara, mixing several venues (Japan, France, Germany, United States...) and several times (ancient Japan, european 1927, United States 60's, present time) in once.
I remember being amazed by Pink Floyd's live at Pompei, since they played a live for no audience ; and being intrigued by Frank Zappa's concept of Xenochrony, which consists of mixing several pieces from different times into one song.
You can say that this album pays homage to those two attempts at playing with the "live album" concept.
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