Brian Eno Apollo Atmospheres & Soundtracks CD

An exquisite experiment, Apollo takes Brian Eno's spacescapes from albums like Another Green World and arranges them with some heavenly pedal steel guitar by Daniel Lanois. The recording engulfs the listener and captures the feel of space travel, weightlessness, and other sensations vividly. It's also perhaps Eno's warmest record ever. In the end, it comes off sounding not unlike a Grateful Dead experiment, with Lanois' lazy pedal steel sounding quite similar to Jerry Garcia's playing on David Crosby's "Laughing." An excellent nighttime vehicle. ~ Matthew Greenwald
An invitation to score Al Reinert's film of the Apollo Mission's lunar landing provided Eno with the "opportunity to explore the feelings of space travel." APOLLO is "one small stepà" for Eno, here working both within and beyond the conceptual confines of his Ambient series. The disc's dozen gorgeous, evocative miniatures see Eno's first collaborative work with producer/guitarist Daniel Lanois--a collaborator who would prove central to many of Eno's subsequent projects--and with his own brother, pianist Roger Eno.
APOLLO contains some of Eno's most carefully crafted melodies, wrought impressionistically in limpid, quicksilver synth and gilded with Lanois's liquid guitar lines. "Matta" and "Under Stars II" imagine the wonders of weightlessness and zero-gravity drift. Lanois's "Silver Morning" views the dawn's smoldering glow from above, while the golden rays of "Deep Blue Day" strain to break at the planet's horizon. "An Ending (Ascent)" watches tearfully from the heavens as a tiny blue Earth falls away into the cradling arms of space; "Always Returning" welcomes the sight of terra firma's green expanses; and the twinkling "Stars" casts its eyes heavenward with a new sense of respect and homesick longing. An ambient masterpiece.