Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks
| Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Brian Eno | ||||
| Released | July 1983 | |||
| Recorded | Grant Avenue Studio, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada | |||
| Genre | Ambient, dark ambient | |||
| Length | 48:08 | |||
| Label | EG & various | |||
| Producer | Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois | |||
| Brian Eno chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | B |
| Mojo | |
| Pitchfork | 9.1/10 |
| Rolling Stone |  |
| Trouser Press | favourable |
Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks is the ninth solo studio album by British ambient musician Brian Eno, released in 1983. It was written, produced, and performed by Brian Eno, his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois. Music from the album appeared in the films 28 Days Later, Traffic, and Trainspotting, whose soundtrack sold approximately four million copies. Two of the songs from the album, "Silver Morning" and "Deep Blue Day", were issued as a 7" single on EG Records.
This music was originally recorded in 1983 for a feature-length documentary movie called "Apollo" later retitled For All Mankind, directed by Al Reinert. The original version of the film had no narration, and simply featured 35mm footage of the Apollo moon missions collected together roughly chronologically, and set to Eno's music as it appears on the album. Although the film had some limited theatrical runs at art house cinemas in some cities, audience response was lukewarm. The filmmakers still felt the film could do better if it reached a wider audience, and so they re-edited the film, added narration, re-structured the music, and re-titled the film in the process. Various edits of the film were shown to test audiences for further refining. As all this was going on, the film's release was delayed until 1989. By that time several tracks on the album were omitted from the soundtrack and replaced by other pieces by Eno and other artists.
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 are:
In the liner notes, Eno relates that when he watched the Apollo 11 landing in 1969 he felt that the strangeness of that event was compromised by the low quality of the television transmission and an excess of journalistic discussion, and that he wished to avoid the melodramatic and uptempo way it was presented. That philosophy dominated when For All Mankind ("Apollo") was originally released as a non-narrative collection of NASA stock footage from the Apollo program. The non-narrative version of the film with the Eno soundtrack was released on VHS video in 1990 by the National Geographic Society. An alternate version was also released by NASA featuring audio interviews but omitting the Brian Eno soundtrack.
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