Dots and Loops

Seven of the ten tracks on Dots and Loops were recorded by Stereolab in March 1997 at the Chicago studio Idful Music Corporation with John McEntire, who co-produced, engineered, and mixed the tracks.[1] The remaining three tracks – "The Flower Called Nowhere", "Prisoner of Mars", and "Contronatura" – were recorded the following month at Academy of St. Martin in the Street in Düsseldorf, this time with co-production, engineering, and mixing duties overseen by Andi Toma.[1] Additional engineering was undertaken by Max Stamm and Toma's Mouse on Mars bandmate Jan St. Werner.[1]

The album's title references Norman McLaren's 1940 animated short films Dots and Loops.[2]

According to AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Dots and Loops is primarily influenced by bossa nova and 1960s pop music.[3] Barney Hoskyns of Rolling Stone found that the album continued Stereolab's progression towards a lighter sound that he termed "avant-easy listening",[4] while Michelle Goldberg of Metro referred to it as the band's "lounge apotheosis".[5] Treble writer Jeff Terich noted the "more lush" quality of the music on Dots and Loops compared to Stereolab's previous work, characterising it as "gorgeously orchestrated" art pop.[6]

Erlewine observed that Stereolab "concentrated on layered compositions" on Dots and Loops.[3] He described the band's interplay on the album as edging "closer to jazz than rock, exploring all of the possibilities of any melodic phrase."[3] Alex Hudson of Exclaim! wrote that "if there's any krautrock to be found here, it's not the motorik pulse of Neu! but the freaky, funky jazz exploration of Can."[7] Pitchfork's Eric Harvey said that Dots and Loops exemplified the "recombinant pop" aesthetic that arose in the 1990s, which saw rock musicians embracing the "looped, sampled and collaged" production techniques of electronic and hip hop music.[8] The album frequently makes use of 5/4 time signatures, including on the tracks "Diagonals", "Rainbo Conversation", and "Parsec".[8]

Dots and Loops opens with the track "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".[8] "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.[9] The following track, "The Flower Called Nowhere", is a "waltz" that "weds a John Barry harpsichord riff with a cosmic MOR melody."[4][10] 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.[11] "Diagonals" pairs a marimba loop with a "mutant-funk jazz drum loop" sampled from Amon Düül II's "I Can't Wait".[8] "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."[10] "Refractions in the Plastic Pulse" is a four-part 17-minute track that begins with "all murky vibes, flat Farfisa pads, bossa-nova guitar and Brian Wilson bass",[4] then "mutat[es] into snarled-up space-rock and metallic junglism – then back to its jaunty original refrain."[10] "Parsec" is a "samba-flavored drum'n'bass track with a peaceful dub break."[12] The ninth track, "Ticker-Tape of the Unconscious", opens with a sample of "Divino, Maravilhoso" by Gal Costa and "lays trancey vibes and brass over Stevie Wonder funk".[4][8] Album closer "Contronatura" starts as "a chiming, intimate plaint through a thicket of massed, dank nature samples",[13] and after "a two minute interlude of organic squishiness",[14] progresses into "a thumping, gelatinous march rhythm", marking the album's "most danceable" sequence.[8]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[3]
Entertainment Weekly	A[16]
The Guardian	[17]
Los Angeles Times	[18]
NME	8/10[10]
Pitchfork	9.2/10[8]
Rolling Stone	[4]
Spin	8/10[12]
Uncut	8/10[19]
The Village Voice	B[20]

Dots and Loops was released on 22 September 1997 in the United Kingdom by Duophonic Records,[21] peaking at number 19 on the UK Albums Chart.[22] In the United States, it was released on 23 September 1997 by Elektra Records,[23] becoming Stereolab's first entry on the Billboard 200 chart, where it peaked at number 111;[24] by August 1999, it had sold over 75,000 copies in the country.[25] Prior to the album's release, "Miss Modular" was issued on 1 September 1997 as a single (on 7" vinyl) and as an EP (on CD and 12" vinyl),[26][27] reaching number 60 on the UK Singles Chart.[28] The song's music video was directed and produced by Nick Abrahams and Mikey Tomkins.[29] The track "Parsec" was later used in commercials for the then-newly launched Volkswagen New Beetle.[14] A remastered and expanded edition of Dots and Loops, featuring a second disc containing demos and instrumental mixes of the album's songs, was released on 13 September 2019 by Duophonic and Warp as part of Stereolab's back catalogue reissue campaign.[30][31][32]

Reviewing Dots and Loops in 1997, The Guardian's Kathy Sweeney considered the album a successful move towards a more accessible and "pop-conscious" sound, with Stereolab's "avant-garde tendencies and atonal drone of old supplanted by breezy harmonies and, wait for it, tunes."[17] Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly said that it "finds them at the top of their game, successfully brokering the seeming shotgun marriage of easy listening and acute intellect."[16] NME writer Stephen Dalton stated that the band "have never sounded so comfortable in a pop setting than on Dots and Loops", which he deemed "both more accessible and more adventurous" than their previous album Emperor Tomato Ketchup.[10] Terri Sutton of Spin praised the music as Stereolab's "most audacious" to date,[12] and Los Angeles Times critic Lorraine Ali commented that the band "continues to revitalize Muzak for the '90s."[18] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau was more critical, finding that "the tunes fall off and the wacky smarts lose the charm of surprise."[20]

In his retrospective review of the album for Pitchfork, Eric Harvey praised Dots and Loops as Stereolab's "peak", finding them "embracing the bleeding edge of digital studio technology" and creating "a work both of its moment and […] that seems to hover outside everything else."[8] Louis Pattison of Uncut described it as being "a touch less immediate" than Emperor Tomato Ketchup, remarking on its "laid-back and loungier" mood, while noting that it captured Stereolab in their "imperial phase".[19] Exclaim!'s I. Khider cited Dots and Loops as a "definitive" post-rock recording.[33] Writing for the same magazine, Alex Hudson commended the band for "deliver[ing] some of their most accessible pop without sacrificing any of their experimental impulses."[7] In Vice, Sophie Kemp called Dots and Loops "a major milestone in the world of experimental pop, and within Stereolab's expansive discography", deeming it the band's "most sonically accessible and politically important record."[15]

All tracks are written by Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier, except where noted.

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[1]

• Dots and Loops at official Stereolab website
• Dots and Loops at Discogs (list of releases)
• Dots and Loops at MusicBrainz (list of releases)