An unexpected gem for me. Not a big fan of the cover, tho the story behind the album helps. This album reminds me of Bill Nelson's "Chance Encounters in the Garde of Light" - an airy 80's ambient masterpiece. But it is darker. Like a bad dream. Almost frustrating at points. Some songs feel trapped in a moment of danger. Whilst others feel like you found the perfect hiding place in your mind. His best since N-Plants in my opinion. Cheers.

I agree, the cover has grown on me esp considering the inspiration behind it.

Great review, well put. I would argue that the photograph on the cover is evocative of exactly this: "...darker. Like a bad dream. Almost frustrating at points. Some songs feel trapped in a moment of danger. "

the problem with releasing a non-gatefold package with multimedia (this package comes w/CD in plain white cardstock) and tight shrink wrapping is - you end up with damaged vinyl (lots of scratches on the surface shaped like the cd. the pressure was so severe that it left black ink cd hub imprints on the inside of the outer sleeve from the cd pressing up against the black paper inner sleeves of the records. both lps had edge mutilations (scuffs) that extended into both lp lead-ins making replay very noisy (VG/G+). the surface on all 4 sides of the lps suffer from bad smearing/scuffing from said pressure 'caused by the "floating," dragged around cd inside the outer sleeve. music like this is best heard when the vinyl is quiet. having a flair sticker stuck to the front cover ruins the cover also, imo....sharing the cover with Black Forest / Black Sea - Black Forest / Black Sea 2003 release

I never understood the categories for vinyl on discogs.. Realistically, there are only three and a half:(near)MINT - scratchy - unplayable.when you buy VG/ VG+ you never know what you get.. mostly those records are so scratchy they are close to unplayable.and the category "Good" means worn out, smeared and noisy records. Sorry for the rant, have you made similar experiences?

These are one of the inspirations for Jenssen’s latest project, which he began working on this project around five years ago, while he was based temporarily in Krakow, Poland. Living near the Wolski forest, his daily walk took him past sites - beautiful and at the same time terrible - where Poles had been executed during the second world war. After researching the area he discovered that a Polish medieval queen Bronislawa, had hidden among the trees with some nuns in the 13th century to escape the invading Tartar hordes, and that a monument to her memory had been built and then destroyed by invading Austrians in the 19th.It made him speculate about what kind of music someone like Bronislawa might have heard while trembling among the trees? Not real music, surely, but something the fears in the mind might conjure up. He went in search of local folk music, from Poland and Ukraine, and began to work with that material to transform it into something reflecting psychological trauma. Around the same time he stumbled on Prokudin-Gorsky’s photographs and was immediately struck by the way they brought history, with its long departed souls, a little bit nearer. One image in particular, of an Armenian woman in a forest in what is now Turkey, especially got under his skin. ‘The crystal clear yet haunting atmosphere fascinated me,’ he says. All of these inspirational elements came together to provide the necessary propulsion to make Departed Glories, an album that sets the back of the neck hairs quivering in just the same way. It’s almost entirely constructed from hundreds of snippets of Eastern European And Russian folk music recordings, melted together to transform them into 17 unsettling and occasionally blindingly radiant beatless tracks. Each sample fragment is like a sliver of glass plate, and like the photos, it has left a music that is radiant, ghostly and unforgettable.Source: http://smalltownsupersound.robotmerch.com/en/smalltown-supersound/biosphere-(pre-order)/c-72/p-1287?ref=cat

This is brilliant info, thanks. I'm loving this album, I think it's up there with his best work.

Thanks for the background information on this release. Really anticipate hearing this even more now.