Biosphere - Departed Glories

[shadowplay]

I was just wrapping up a copy of this as a gift and thought it worth sharing. I keep going back to this album and drifting up through the supernatural smoke of it's space.

If anyone is looking for a record to just lie in the dark and listen to or sit for a quiet hour looking out the window at the turning leaves (if you are in an autumnal zone) may I recommend Departed Glories by Biosphere.

It's such a beautiful record, with a profound, yet life affirming and somehow uplifting melancholy.

Five years in the making, the album's core influence stems from the recently discovered work of Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. A pioneer of colour photography who worked using sheets of glass to project images such as the one of the landscape that adorns the cover (an amazing image considering it's over 100 years old). The photos Biosphere discovered in Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky's archive provided a huge influence on the way he produced Departed Glories, as he quotes "the crystal clear yet haunting atmosphere fascinated me". There is a real strong feel of the otherworldly within the grooves and it convulses a strangely out of time feeling, that extends through the albums seventeen tracks. In terms of scale and sheer innovation, we'd say it's best compared to SAW2. But, where Richard D. James described that album as "like standing in a power station on acid" Departed Glories is the trip through the woods after leaving, head still spun and a glazed shimmer over the senses and everything else around.

Ghosted vocals drift throw vast walls of reverb drenched sound that prove near impossible to pinpoint the sound sources each track is composed of, with each piece slowly unfurling before melting into the next and making for a 'journey' in the truest sense of the word, one that upon arriving at the final destination, the room around can be a very different place (or it's about 8 hours later and you have had it on repeat) Having produced countless records since the "greatest ambient album of all time" (according to the Hyperreal website) Substrata, Departed Glories is the true long awaited follow up and will reign tall as one of the crowning jewels in his discography.

Bandcamp stream ; Biosphere - Departed Glories

Love the sleeve.



Btw if you've never heard Substrata it's worth an hour of your time.

D

[mezcalhead]

I meant to buy Departed Glories when you first mentioned it here; I'll pick both those up now.

[nanamour]

I just picked this up today. The album art caught my eye (I had a Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky obsession** for a while) and I remembered its mention in the favorite albums of 2016 thread so I thought I'd give it a go and oh how glad I am that I did.

Some of the tracks really remind me of the ANS synthesizer stuffEdward Artemiev and Coil delved into, but here coming from a lighter strata of the void. Equally perfect for a committed zoneout or music to get work done to.

**Rant alert but anyone who liked the cover art or who might be into a look at rural life in pre-Bolshevik Russia, The Caucasus, Central Asia should take a look here: Library of Congress Produkin-Gorsky Collection where you can find well over a thousand of his beautiful color photos digitized in high quality and arranged by subject matter. I need to be careful because I've gotten lost for hours down the rabbit hole.


BTW the album cover is "Armenian National Costume" in case anyone is interested.

100 years later he seems quite big in the album art design game--see also: Frog Eyes - Paul's Tomb: A Triumph (Astronomical Instruments (1907) and Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant (Monastery of St. Nil on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver Province in the background, the foreground I'm not sure of but I'm almost certain it's a Produkin-Gorsky)

...AND...Dungen - Haxan (Ural Owls (1910)

[shadowplay]

^^^

Top post.

You always post really interesting stuff, those links to the photos are great, looking them up was on my todo list.

D

[nanamour]

Glad you got something out of them! They're really an incredible window into another time...between the quality of the photos and Gorsky's skill at capturing expressions in his portraits, through some of the pictures you almost feel as though you can reach back a century and have a conversation with the subject. The Armenian girl on the Departed Glories sleeve is a perfect example.

By the way Shadowplay, since you seem to have a bit of a hauntological naturalist slant you might like (from the same series as the Snowy Owls):

Lynx (also on the back cover of Haxan)
Ermines
White Fox
White Partridges
Mushroom looks like ol' Sergei was getting into the Fly Agaric

[antisymmetric]

This is lovely stuff- listening now, while also reading about Produkin- Gorsky. Very worthwhile thread, thanks Shadowplay, and also to nanamour for chiming in.
OSG

[shadowplay]

It's really different to Departed Glories and if anything circling back to his earliest ideas but I'd still really recommned the new record The Petrified Forest which is based on the 1936 film of the same name. He released two songs off it as a seven about a month ago and I must have played it 50 times easy.

It's less float and smoke, still beautiful but closer to something the milkman might whistle. I guess it's perhaps the sort of thing that couls get it's grappling hook up and over the wall between folk really into this sort of thing and folk who perhaps only dabble in something like Boards of Canada and those groups with big cross appeal.

Biosphre - The Petrified Forest.

Video for Black Mesa.

D

[NickD]

I'd seen it was out but hadn't had a chance to buy yet.

I've loved everything of his I've heard so far - I had Cirque on yesterday.

[mezcalhead]

Yes, I'd seen that. I have been doing a deep delve into his back catalogue for the last few months now, he and loscil are providing most of my incidental soundtrack at the moment.

TBH I prefer Petrified Forest to Departed Glories, something about the choral aspect of Departed Glories doesn't work quite as well for me although it's still lovely to listen to of course.

[shadowplay]

TBH I prefer Petrified Forest to Departed Glories, something about the choral aspect of Departed Glories doesn't work quite as well for me although it's still lovely to listen to of course.

I like both but The Petrified Forest is such an easy listen. I don't mean that in a negative or snobbish way, more that we were happy to play it 4 times in a row at the weekend during family time and no one wanted to change it.

D