Brian Eno With Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno – Apollo (Atmospheres & Soundtracks) (1983)

This one was another holiday purchase, from a charity shop in Penzance, who seemed to have recently received the entire back catalogue of the Dave Matthews Band, with whom I'm unfamiliar, but have many preconceived ideas.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I spend my entire time scouring charity shops searching for CDs to enhance my collection, but that's simply not the case. Sometimes, as in Rugby today, I buy books instead.

This, though, felt like a win, rather than a punt. An Eno I'd heard of, but didn't own. Written as the soundtrack for the NASA documentary film For All Mankind about the Apollo space missions, it's as you'd expect - haunting, futuristic, but without overwhelming, as a film soundtrack should be. I've suggested in the past that ambient albums, by their very nature will struggle to have the impact to get them the highest ratings, but this series of atmospheric pieces comes close. Most of it is gently lovely, but there are a couple of pieces which stand out as particularly beautiful. An Ending (Descent) is one of these, with the feel of his previous Another Green World and Silver Morning, a piece by Daniel Lanois, with his dreamy guitar floating.

A fine example of Eno's ambient genre, highly recommended.

Link to full album

4* - Eno doing what he does best - making beautiful music in collaboration with others