Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo AUGUST 2019 - by David Sheppard

BRIAN ENO - APOLLO: ATMOSPHERES & SOUNDTRACKS - EXTENDED EDITION

Remastered lunar mission-inspired soundtrack essays, plus a disc of extra material.

The tripartite endeavour of Brian Eno, his brother Roger, and Daniel Lanois, 1983's Apollo owed its genesis to a soundtrack commission for Al Reinert's moon landing documentary, For All Mankind. Several of its eerie yet mellifluous instrumentals achieved sufficient escape velocity to become key, standalone works in the Eno canon, not least the aching An Ending (Ascent), whose hymnal ambient clouds (glowingly polished here) remain a ubiquitous documentary soundtrack staple. The additional material is marketed as 'new tracks', although sonically it's entirely of a piece with the original. Whatever their provenance, the likes of Strange Quiet, with its pretty, pointillist synths and wobbly drones, the stately crystal guitar-flecked Capsule, or the tremulous, opalescent Under The Moon, serve to deepen the original album's strange, wonderstruck mood, seemingly hovering, like an orbiting Apollo command module, between fragile yet heroic human endeavour and overwhelming cosmic awe.