| Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 29 July 1983 (1983-07-29)[1][2] | |||
| Recorded | 1981–1982 | |||
| Studio | Grant Avenue Studio,Hamilton, Ontario, Canada | |||
| Genre | Ambient | |||
| Length | 48:08 | |||
| Label | EG | |||
| Producer | Brian Eno,Daniel Lanois | |||
| Brian Eno chronology | ||||
| ||||
Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks is a studio album by the British musician and producerBrian Eno, the Canadian producerDaniel Lanois, and the composerRoger Eno, who is Brian Eno's brother. It was released on 29 July 1983 throughEG Records.[1][2] The music was originally written for a documentary film about theApollo program,For All Mankind, though the film was not released until 1989.[3] The music was written and performed by the trio.
Music from the album has appeared in the films28 Days Later,Traffic,andTrainspotting, whosesoundtrack sold approximately four million copies.[4] Two of the songs from the album, "Silver Morning" and "Deep Blue Day", were issued as a 7" single onEG Records.
The music was originally composed in 1983 for a documentary film,For All Mankind, that was released in 1989.
In the liner notes, Eno describes his experience of watching theApollo 11 landing in 1969 and his sense that the strangeness of the event was compromised by the low quality of the television transmission and an excess of journalists' commentary. He thus wished to avoid the melodramatic and uptempo way the event was presented.
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 89/100 (extended edition)[5] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [6] |
| Christgau's Record Guide | B[7] |
| Mojo | [8] |
| Pitchfork | 9.1/10[9] |
| Q | [10] |
| Record Collector |  [11] |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [12] |
| Spin Alternative Record Guide | 8/10[13] |
| The Times | [14] |
| Uncut | 8/10(2019)[15] 10/10(2025)[16] |
The album was released on 29 July 1983 byEG Records.[1][2] A release in the US followed in September 1983.[17]
The tracks from the album that remain on the final edit of the film are:
The newer tracks from the film that are not on the album (but appear onMusic for Films III) are:
On 19 July 2019, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, a special version of the album was released, featuring the remastered original, as well as an accompanying album of 11 new instrumental compositions by Brian Eno, Roger Eno & Daniel Lanois that reimagine the soundtrack toFor All Mankind.[3]
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The orbital photograph of the lunar surface is a hand heldHasselblad-camera photograph made during theApollo 17 mission in December 1972. It shows a closeup view of the most southern section ofMare Serenitatis on the eastern part of the Moon's near side. Also visible arePromontorium Archerusia (the oblong system of hills),Brackett (the shallow crater),Dorsum Nicol (the wrinkle ridge), Rimae Plinius (the threegrooves), and the northern part of the rim of the pronounced craterPlinius. On the album cover, the upper margin of the orbital Hasselblad photograph is rotated 90 degrees to the right. Also visible on the cover photograph is the brightness of Mare Serenitatis to the north (rightward) of the shallow crater Brackett and Rimae Plinius. When observed through a telescope, this region shows a subtle yellowish or tannish grey color. The region to the south (leftward) of Mare Serenitatis shows a subtle bluish grey, which is the overall color ofMare Tranquillitatis. On the cover these subtlereal colors are not reproduced, only the abrupt change of brightness is visible.
The album contains a variety of styles. "Under Stars", "The Secret Place", "Matta", "Signals", "Under Stars II", and "Stars" are all dark, complicated textures similar to those on Eno's previous albumAmbient 4: On Land. "An Ending (Ascent)", "Drift", and "Always Returning" are smoother electronic pieces. "Silver Morning", "Deep Blue Day", and "Weightless" arecountry-inspired ambient pieces featuring Daniel Lanois onpedal steel guitar.
Country music, which Eno listened to as a child inWoodbridge on American armed forces radio, was used to "give the impression of weightless space."[18]
"Under Stars" is a recurring theme in the album, first appearing as an ambient electronic bed behind a treated guitar. "Under Stars II" is the same composition, but with different effects and treatments. "Stars" is the pure background texture without the guitar.
The track "An Ending (Ascent)" was sampled in the song "Hear Me Out" by the groupFrou Frou, in "Forgive" by British producerBurial, in "Ascent" by Michael Dow, a Londonelectronic music producer, and in "The Ending" by British DJGraham Gold. It has also been used in several films, such asTraffic and28 Days Later, and in the memorial wall section of theLondon Olympiad opening.
Many of the tracks on the album were recorded with soft "attacks" of each note, then played backwards, with multiple heavy echoes and reverb added in both directions to merge the notes into one long flowing sound with each note greatly overlapping each adjacent note, producing the "floating" effects that Eno desired.
Daniel Lanois stated in an interview withNoisey about the album that the "foundation" of the song "Deep Blue Day" was aSuzuki Omnichord that was heavily slowed down from the original tempo that it was recorded at. In an interview withGearspace, Lanois has also mentioned that aYamaha CS-80 synthesizer, aStrat guitar, and aSho-Bud steel guitar were used in the song.[19] Eno once stated regarding the soundtrack: "...so many processings and reprocessings – it's a bit like making soup from the leftovers of the day before, which in turn was made from leftovers..."[20] Eno said, ".... Well, I love that music anyway .... what I find impressive about that music is that it's very concerned with space in a funny way. Its sound is the sound of a mythical space, the mythical American frontier space that doesn’t really exist anymore. That's why on Apollo I thought it very appropriate, because it's very much like 'space music' — it has all the connotations of pioneering, of the American myth of the brave individual...."[18]
In the summer of 2009 a live version of the album was performed at two concerts in theIMAX cinema ofLondon'sScience Museum and in an arrangement bySouth Korean composer Woojun Lee for the ensembleIcebreaker with featured artistB J Cole onpedal steel guitar. The album was performed in its entirety, with the tracks in a different order, to a silent and edited version ofFor All Mankind, closer to the original conception than the released version of the film. A revised version was performed twice at the 2010Brighton Festival, where Eno was guest artistic director, before subsequent touring in the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe.
Due to the heavily processed nature of the studio-based sound on the original tracks, an exact reproduction would have been impossible to reproduce in a live context, so Woojun Lee chose to apply a free interpretation of the sound world and to make an impression of the original tracks through use of Icebreaker's instrumental resources.
The performances from Brighton were recorded and an album of the live interpretation was released in June 2012.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Under Stars" | Brian Eno,Daniel Lanois | 4:25 |
| 2. | "The Secret Place" | Daniel Lanois, arranged Brian Eno | 3:27 |
| 3. | "Matta" | Brian Eno | 4:14 |
| 4. | "Signals" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 2:44 |
| 5. | "An Ending (Ascent)" | Brian Eno | 4:18 |
| 6. | "Under Stars II" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 3:15 |
| 7. | "Drift" | Roger Eno, Brian Eno | 3:03 |
| 8. | "Silver Morning" | Daniel Lanois | 2:35 |
| 9. | "Deep Blue Day" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Roger Eno | 3:53 |
| 10. | "Weightless" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, Roger Eno | 4:28 |
| 11. | "Always Returning" | Brian Eno, Roger Eno | 3:49 |
| 12. | "Stars" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 7:57 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "The End of a Thin Cord" | Brian Eno | 4:09 |
| 2. | "Capsule" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 3:14 |
| 3. | "At the Foot of a Ladder" | Brian Eno, Roger Eno | 3:36 |
| 4. | "Waking Up" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 2:29 |
| 5. | "Clear Desert Night" | Brian Eno | 3:11 |
| 6. | "Over the Canaries" | Brian Eno | 4:42 |
| 7. | "Last Step from the Surface" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 3:58 |
| 8. | "Fine-Grained" | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | 3:37 |
| 9. | "Under the Moon" | Brian Eno, Roger Eno | 3:10 |
| 10. | "Strange Quiet" | Brian Eno, Roger Eno | 4:09 |
| 11. | "Like I Was a Spectator" | Brian Eno | 4:23 |
| Country | Release date | Music label | Media | Catalogue number | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 1983 | Editions EG | LP | 813 535-1 | |
| US | 1983 | EG Records | LP | EGLP 53 | |
| US | 1983 | Caroline | CD | 0 1704-61514-2 9 | |
| UK | 1983 | Virgin | CD | 0777 7 86778 2 6 | |
| UK | 1986 | EG Records | CD | EGCD 53 | |
| UK | 2005 | Virgin | CD | 7243 5 63647 2 1 | |
| Europe | 2005 | Virgin | CD | ENOCD 10 | Remastered |
| US | 1983 | Editions EG | 11 x LP | EGBS 2 | Working Backwards 1983–1973 (Box set) |
| Chart (1983) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| New Zealand Albums Chart[21] | 48 |
| Chart (2019) | Peak position |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[22] | 127 |
| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)[23] | 138 |
| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[24] | 61 |
| Scottish Albums (OCC)[25] | 8 |
| UK Albums (OCC)[26] | 16 |
| USTop Album Sales (Billboard)[27] | 48 |
| USTop Dance Albums (Billboard)[28] | 16 |
| US Indie Store Album Sales (Billboard)[29] | 9 |
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (BPI)[30] | Silver | 60,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. | ||
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