Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street

The core session took place at Studios La Buissonne near Avignon in April 2008. Courtrais was recorded live in Kortrijk, Belgium, and Abu Gil, Northline and Light on Water live at Kings Place in London; Peter Freeman, who co-produced, edited and mixed the album in Los Angeles at the end of 2008. ECM noted that it also holds a remix of a piece first made for a Wim Wenders film, which is Blue Period. The title comes from Rumi's poem The New Rule in Coleman Barks' translation. Hassell told NPR he liked that the line could be praise of God or a glimpse of someone beautiful walking past.

He described the record as one continuous, almost symphonic piece with a cinematic construction, a montage of recent concerts by the changing cast of Maarifa Street, whose players brought their personalities to it as actors do to a film. Steve Futterman of The New Yorker placed its tone "somewhere between Miles Davis and a humpback whale". John Kelman of All About Jazz said few artists had built so complete a sound world. The Quietus found it a good, very ECM-sounding Hassell album but thought Abu Gil too abstract, and The Jazzmann's Tim Owen, though ambivalent, called him one of the true originals. Tyran Grillo later heard it as the ambient underside of Nils Petter Molvaer's Khmer.