I must confess that I didn’t think I would enjoy this. As someone whose exposure to the Kompakt label doesn’t extend much further than last year’s raved-about-by-millions-most-probably-including-you album by The Field, I decided to base my misgivings on much more tenuous grounds. You see, I figured that I’m just a bit too bitter, too cynical, too irritable, to be amused by anything with the word “pop” in the title.

Lets take that album by The Field, From Here We Go Sublime, shall we? It made me feel like lounging around my beach house in a pair of shorts, scratching myself, watching the sun go down, whilst mixing myself the first pina colada of the evening. Which all sounds great, but then I remember that I don’t own a beach house, and I’m pretty unlikely to acquire one at any point soon based on any statisically-valid extrapolation of my current wealth accumulation rate. Which pisses me off, frankly. I didn’t even know I wanted a beach house until I listened to that record.

So to the revelation: I love this latest Kompakt annual, which thankfully (for my prejudices) errs on the ambient side of the loosely-guarded ambient pop border. In fact the title doesn’t quite do justice to the extent of the album’s terrain at all. However, as it meanders through the brilliant, understated glitchiness of Andrew Thomas’s “Shiny Garden” or Markus Guentner’s “Oceans Day”, through the aching cinematics of Klimek’s “The Ice Storm” or Popnoname’s “Fembria”, I can’t help but feel I’ve been missing out these last, erm, eight years. Maybe I’m lightening up. Anyone seen my Speedos?

Listen to more and buy it over at Kompakt.