For the eighth installment of Kompakt’s Connecting The Dots mix series, we welcome Michaela Dippel, aka Ada, back to the fold for the first time since 2014, for a creative forage through the Kompakt family’s back catalog of 15,000+ tracks. You might remember some of Ada’s other Kompakt engagements: her beautiful Adaptations mixtape from back in 2009, or her collaboration with Heiko Voss, her remixes with Mayburg, and her Damh 12”, where she worked alongside David Hasert. A legendary and stylish DJ, Ada has also produced two gorgeous solo albums, and a string of singles, mostly for the Areal label and more recently on DJ Koze’s Pampa imprint. But on Connecting The Dots, Ada’s found the time to pull together a gorgeous, heady collection of Kompakt cuts, in a mix that’s both crafty and lavish.

The mood of this Connecting The Dots is similar, in some ways, to Ada’s own music, exploring the many permutations of subtle shades of melancholy and lushness, from the late-night percolations of Extrawelt’s “Pink Panzer”, through to the sensual stride of Matias Aguayo’s “Walter Neff”. With a sure sense of pacing, Ada brings you into the mix with the sweet, drifting yacht-pop of Andreas Dorau and Justus Köhncke’s “Abermorgen”, before levitating you on a sea of bliss via All’s “Alltag” – one of many subtle yet inspired shifts that catches you unawares. From there, Heiko Voss’s “I Think About You” brings the Kompakt pop sensibility to the forefront, something that recurs through the mix – see the understated electro-pop of Servicio Al Cliente’s “Romántico”, from her debut album on Michael Mayer’s Imara imprint.

The final stretch of the mix dreams you slowly to the firmament: it’s full of tickertape details, hypnagogic psychedelia, and heavenly atmospherics. Reaching far back into Kompakt’s history, Lawrence’s “Gilbert”, from 2000’s Total 2, makes a most welcome reappearance, before two Dettinger remixes of Kompakt classics – Closer Musik’s “One Two Three (No Gravity)” and Jürgen Paape’s “So Weit Wie Noch Nie” – play tag team with DJ Koze’s playful “The Geklöppel Continues 3”. Seductive minimalism, ambient drift, early hours techno, playful pop moments – it’s all here, everything you want from Kompakt. Connecting the dots? Ada does it with style to spare.