It is Alcest's first release with creator Neige as sole member, as former members Aegnor and Argoth both left after the 2001 demo Tristesse hivernale, and the only release with Neige as sole performer.

He noted that it sounded "like a Cocteau Twins/Burzum collaborative split" and that "[r]oughly half the time, vocals were delivered in an angelic coo; the other half, they were a raw, distant shriek".

[2] The lyrics of the track "Élévation" come from the eponymous poem by Charles Baudelaire's from his 1857 volume of poetry Les Fleurs du mal.

Thom Jurek of AllMusic, stated that "it remains a very special record, as it lays out in total the first aural manifesto that all the work of Alcest to date was based upon, and shows just how far apart the unit is, in content and form, from other shoegaze metal acts.

This is the door to a powerful, poetic, unsettling world of bliss that still challenges the sense of hearing even as it delights".