Leaving The Garden is so far the only album from Lithuanian dark ambient artist Daina Dieva. It's also one of the most beautiful albums to come from the Section XIII: Coma label, with a solemn, ethereal, sound that centers around Daina Dieva's multi-layered vocals; her dreamy voice transforms this music into something quite different from the grimmer, more desolate sounds of stygian ambience that we would usually expect from this label, a kind of gorgeous, funereal chant-drift.

Opening with a gorgeous wash of dark orchestral murmurings, "Waiting For The Snow" reveals a vast black abyss of subterranean sound, distant rumblings echo across the void while creepy moans and gasps emerge at the forefront of the mix. There's a rhythmic quality to this vast dark ambience as some of the sounds begin to loop around, bits of eerie piano-like melody appearing and circling endlessly through the gloom, occasionally overwhelmed by gusts of dank catacomb air. These melodic sounds gradually start to take over though, and the last few minutes of this piece transform into something very Troum-esque, a swirling dreamlike wash of shimmering drone.

On "The Red Sun", however, Daina Dieva introduces her vocals into the music, and the effect is great; her beautiful singing melts into the gleaming nocturnal ambience like strains of some ancient folk melody, slowly drifting through a crepuscular gloom while strange percussive noises echo in the background.

All of these elements come together on the nearly twenty minute title track that becomes the centerpiece of the album. Undulating metallic drones drift and creep through the massive dungeon depths that arise over the first several minutes, a deep sinister ambient sound that echoes Heresy-era Lustmord. As the track progresses, the background slowly comes alive with sounds of distant chimes, spectral music-box melodies and swells of deep resonant drone, and then Dieva's vocals reappear, drifting in as layers of vocals are draped over one another to create a haunting, liturgical feel, and results in a striking sound that's almost like a super minimal Dead Can Dance track, a blend of gorgeous ghostly Projekt-esque darkwave and rumbling abyssal ambience. And the disc closes with a shorter track called "The Silent One" that is just as evocative and haunting as the title track, again melding her lush, reverb-drenched vocals with a mysterious, abstract clockwork melody and washes of cavernous drift...

Like the other Section XIII titles that we've gotten, this comes in a slim Dvd style case with full color sleeve art and an eight page full color booklet.