v/a: Pop Ambient 2010

Label: Kompakt

In a long-running, much-lauded series like Pop Ambient, there’s really only one thing you can do to keep things fresh on a new installment: Line up your best ambient travelers and stamp their passports. And wow, the pillow-fighters at Kompakt have really curated the hell out of Pop Ambient 2010. My attention to techno has drifted, but neither you nor I need to be reminded that Wolfgang Voigt (a.k.a. Gas), The Orb, Dettinger and Thomas Fehlmann are real leaders in this field. Voigt’s entry, “Zither Und Horn,” diverges from the Gas line and instead delivers tinkly bliss; the Orb and Fehlmann each burrow deep into endless layers of dreamy gauze, awesome pieces from both. Filling out the comp’s 13 tracks are genuinely moving tracks from Marsen Jules, whose stately “The Sound of One Lip Kissing” opens the record in jaw-dropping fashion, and Brock Van Wey/BVDub, who follows that with clouds of mist and a heavenly vocal loop on “Lest You Forget.” By then, you are off and dreamin’. (The vinyl includes a CD copy of the album.) (M.L. Thrope)