Stereolab Dots And Loops Zip
Vinnie Breidenthal
The Dots and Loops sessions marked the first time Stereolab recorded straight to Digital Audio Tape, a process the band found enjoyable. McEntire also introduced the band to Pro Tools. "Digital audio recording seemed like a child's toy," said Tim Gane. "Making lots of little loops of the bass, guitar and the drum parts, not having to play everything through from beginning to end, plopping things in where you wanted them and moving things around to see how it sounded. We loved it!"[3] The extra track "Bonus Beats" from the album's 2019 expanded edition also sees the band's drummer Andy Ramsay experimenting with a drum machine.[3]
Dots and Loops opens with "Brakhage", which in its first seconds "sputter[s] to life like it's being tuned in from outer space on a vintage receiver", and is afterwards anchored by a two-chord keyboard line and "skittering drum and vibraphone loops".[10] "Miss Modular" is built on a two-chord pattern augmented by brass arranged by Sean O'Hagan, and finds Tim Gane using the guitar "as a percussive element" to complement Andy Ramsay's drumming.[12] The following track, "The Flower Called Nowhere", is a "waltz" that "weds a John Barry harpsichord riff with a cosmic MOR melody."[6][15] Gane said that the song took inspiration from composer Krzysztof Komeda and incorporates a choral chant from Komeda's score for the 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers.[16] "Diagonals" pairs a marimba loop with a "mutant-funk jazz drum loop" sampled from Amon Düül II's "I Can't Wait".[10] "Prisoner of Mars", the album's fifth track, has been described as "an Astrud Gilberto-style dreamy drift of a ditty which sporadically yanks up its swooshing skirt of sumptuous melody to reveal ultra-spartan techno-rhumba undercarriage."[15]
The album opens with "Brakage" and, when listening to it, we're immediately placed in some horrible resort town: no one cares about anything, culture is declining, and society is politically somewhere deep in an abyss. This song sets up the science fiction that is Dots And Loops: we encounter a futuristic society full of strange, cryptic conversations. We are in a literal space of dots and loops. Sadier sings on the track, "We can be bound/run around/ fooled animal bites its own tails." As these lyrics repeat, there's sonic meandering and mellow lines of layered synth. Sadier's voice is gentle to the ear, yet it is a space that precariously walks the line of beautiful sonic benevolence and political, dystopian horror.
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