Various Artists - Pop Ambient 2021 (LP)

Facts 2020 release. It's 2020, the year Pop Ambient turns twenty-one years old, a spritely young adult waltzing out of it's teenage joys and tears. Pop Ambient has always stood for a certain classicism and elegance, a kind of beatless music that's diaphanous and hazy, gossamer and glittering. Pop Ambient has always felt like a field for play for the KOMPAKT cognoscenti, and 2021 is no different, with Joachim Spieth collaborating with Pepo Galán on the sidereal visions of "Libration", while Leandro Fresco teams up with Thore Pfeiffer on the lovely "Abejorro". Pfeiffer also contributes two lovely solo miniatures of abstract longing. Yui Onodera calls in again, long distance, for their fourth Pop Ambient running, with the refracted, glinting lightscapes of "Cromo 5" and "Monochrome", while there are also star turns from Max Würden, both solo and in Reich & Würden (with Luis Reichard), and Morgen Wurde, who drops by with the 'ethereal drama' of "Mittsommer".