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Various Artists - Pop Ambient
| Prefixmag |
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For those of us who didn't get to see snow-capped mountains this winter, Kompakt has the soundtrack for similarly blissful dreamscapes. Pop Ambient, Kompakt's quintessential ambient series, is now in its ninth year. And after a monumental 2008 for ambient music, Pop Ambient 2009 provides the flash of introspection that makes the last stage of winter bearable. Kompakt rarely strays from the script with its yearly ambient compilation, which is basically an introduction to and review of the more experimental output. Longtime label hands (Klimek, Andrew Thomas) and newcomers (Sylvain Chauveau) fill an hour of somber and at times chilling sonic elegance. A major change this year is the organic instrumentation used, especially on Sylvain Chauveau's two tracks. ...full text |
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| Pitchfork. |
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Ah, the Pop Ambient compilation. So reliable, so consistent, you could almost set your watch to the darn thing. Every year, it shows up around the same time with those same Photoshopped flowers. It features the same loose collection of artists (Klimek's back!) who share the same central aim: to rub some ointment on your post-winter blues with the gentle drifts and glides fans of the series have come to expect. The comp is rarely astounding and at the same time, never really disappointing. With a few minor tweaks to their time-tested formula and a couple fresh faces onboard, Kompakt's 2009 installment of its annual ambient-techno roundup is no different. As he's done in the past, label head Wolfgang Voigt serves as the set's curator. Perhaps encouraged by the warm reception to his (excellent) Nah Und Fern boxset from last year, the Gas mastermind also contributes a handful of new songs to PA09. Sadly they're not his finest. Under his Mint moniker, Voigt presents "Hindemith", a relatively ho-hum concoction of spare piano, horns, and his signature vapor-like hiss. He teams up with longtime pal Jörg Burger for a pair of tracks: a pleasant but mostly forgettable remix of Jürgen Paape's "Ausklang" and "Frieden", a Burger/Voigt original that's easily the best of his three offerings. With deep basslines and active, echoing synths, it's equally soothing and dynamic, just what you want out of a Pop Ambient cut....full text |
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| Residentadvisor |
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The joy of techno is in its immediacy, its concentration of pop music's most visceral moments onto great galloping grids. Ambient music functions similarly, trading ecstatic action for ecstatic stasis, but it's equally direct and uncompromising. Successful ambient music is also about dichotomies, of the darkness below the surface, and being "as ignorable as it is interesting," as Brian Eno once put it. Kompakt's Pop Ambient series has long recognised this balance, and it's what keeps them from the scented candle store. Due to the abiding nature of Pop Ambient releases (same names, same sounds year-in-year-out) discussing their merits is much like discussing which direction a particular instalment tilts, and at times 2009 dips dangerously close to drowning in dread (perhaps hinted at in the black cover, a contrast with 2008's white). And with new artists replacing old—goodbye Markus Guentner and Ulf Lohmann, hello Tim Hecker and Sylvain Chauveau—devoted fans may feel slighted. Fittingly, this too balances out: French neo-classicist Chauveau's two anodyne pieces are offset by the growling blizzard of Hecker's stunning "Shosts," the respective "softest" and "hardest" works on this set....full text |
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