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Album Reviews
Album Review: Various Artists – Apollo: Past, Present, Future (Apollo/R&S)
By Marc Samuels | Published on Friday 4 September 2009
Apollo was one of the most interesting labels for electronic music in the 90s, producing ambient, electronica and experimental output as the sister to dance label R&S. Reignited last year, both labels will be (digitally) reissuing their back catalogue and this compilation serves as a timely reminder of what made Apollo a reliable source of quality back in its day. Rather than a definitive history of the label, ‘Past Present And Future’ works more as a sampler, giving you a taster of the label’s horizontal aesthetic. Featuring classic ambient tracks from the likes of Aphex Twin, Biosphere and Golden Girls (with the lustrous David Morley remix of ‘Kinetic’) alongside lesser known talents (Mark Van Hoen contributes three lush, otherworldly tracks under his Locust guise), the compilation also showcases newer material as well as some tracks (Underworld’s ‘Sola Sistim’ being the best; the drab indie of Pinback being the worst) from outside the label, chosen by compiler and label owner Renaat Vandepapeliere himself. The three new tracks meanwhile all sound like they could have been released at any point in the last decade and a half but offer up intriguing possibilities of what the future might hold for Apollo, despite each being frustratingly short in length. By no means a faultless compilation then, but a welcome release nonetheless. MS
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