Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

The Wire JULY 2019 - by Kurt Gottschalk

BRIAN ENO - APOLLO: ATMOSPHERES & SOUNDTRACKS (EXTENDED EDITION)

1983's Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks is - depending on how you parse it - either one of Brian Eno least or most successful ambient albums. Its success lies in its multiple textures. While being an enormously undemanding record (as Eno's ambient experiments by definition were), its layering provides a depth that rewards close, and repeat, listening, arguably more so than his other records of the era. Such is also its failure. The album is comprised of a dozen tracks of more or less pop song length (two and a half to four and a half minutes, with an epic eight minute closer) that feature, if only occasionally, evocative passages and discernible instruments.

Saving it from defeat is the fact that the album isn't actually billed as ambient music, Eno's personal; idée fixe between 1977's Before And After Science and his next album of songs, 1992's Nerve Net. Falling between volumes one and two of his Music For Films releases, Apollo is actually a proper soundtrack - rather than the speculative scores on the film music albums - created for a documentary about the first manned moon landing. The album had many of the hallmarks of Eno ambience and certainly had cover art to suggest it was part of a series, but it stands out by drifting in and out of song forms. Simple rhythms, repeating bass lines and (especially) Daniel Lanois's pedal steel guitar are employed, sounds Enoretrieved from his memories of listening to American armed forces radio as a child. The music floats by like radio waves, the slide guitar and backmasked melody lines (reversing the decay) keep it airy and light-hearted.

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, Eno, his Brother Roger and producer Daniel Lanois convened for the first time since the Apollo sessions, remastering the original and recording a new album's worth of music. The eleven new tracks are wonderfully in keeping with the material from three dozen years ago. The goal is neither to mimic nor contradict the original album, and it's not exactly an updating either. It's discernibly different, yet feels the same. The electronics are more sophisticated - there's a new and occasional, gentle glitchiness, a more sophisticated (but still soft) percussion palette - but at the same time, there's acoustic guitar and organ that didn't play a part in the original sessions.

A lot has changed on Earth since 1983, to say nothing of 1969. Eno and Lanois both became superstar mainstream rock producers and Roger Eno (whose first appearance on record was Apollo) has composed for film and television while continuing to work with his brother. Space, on the other hand, presumably hasn't changed a lot, even if we're learning more about it at a disarming rate. It seems Lanois and the Enos recognised as much. The expansion of their original view of the cosmos is clearer and more beautiful than ever.