minutestatic - Dalot

minutestatic

Dalot
n5MD Records.


SCQ Rating: 72%

Released just twelve months after her n5MD debut, minutestatic reads like a sophomore effort looking to expand on Maria Papadomanolaki’s blurred textural experiments – nothing more. Such an ambition might've seemed lackluster had her 2010 release Loops Over Latitude not grappled such a uniquely evasive sound from the get-go. Luckily for us, Papadomanolaki again follows that singular muse, employing heavy sonic layers to increasingly concise, textural washes – some even containing a pop-like pulse.

Dalot’s more invitational approach first jumps out on ‘Missing Pieces’, which uses a metronomic beat to pace out slightly warped keyboard arpeggios, and again over the shimmering guitar tones that paint ‘The Empty Desk’ with a Campfire Headphase-like serenity. Tracks like ‘The Blue Car’ and the contemplative ‘In Silence’ show continued refinement of Dalot’s at times gauzy approach but, in general, minutestatic contains more memorable passages and emotional anchors (meaning “pop hooks” in ambient terms) than Looping Over Latitude expounded. Unsurprisingly it’s Dalot’s talents incorporating electro-acoustic instrumentation into her collages that affords these songs such warm and bewildering nature. Her guitar work gives ‘Cause & Effect’ a winding backbone without forcing a linear reading of the track’s ambience. And it’s that breadth of instrumental knowledge that helps Dalot stand out from so many cloudy laptop artists – many being unaware of what a glockenspiel is, let alone how to play one. Let’s hope future releases continue minutestatic’s progress of weeding out Papadomanolaki’s unique talents from electro-shoegaze obscurity.

Loop Over Latitudes - Dalot

Loop Over Latitudes

Dalot
n5MD Records.

SCQ Rating: 76%

It’s curious that n5MD, a label that initially dealt in the mini-disc as its format of choice, now regularly issues some of the most commanding, full-length-encompassing records of all the electronic imprints. This isn’t the case of a once micro-scaled label puffing out its chest; their reputation for quality albums that clock between seventy and eighty minutes in length renders each release day a massive one, each record a mini universe to carry home and discover. Loop Over Latitudes may break that reliable mould by registering well under the hour-mark but Maria Papadomanolaki, who records as Dalot, earns every second of n5MD’s aura by engineering compositions that stretch out ominously without ever blurring into drone’s seesaw dynamics.

As both a classically trained musician and a sound-collage artist, Papadomanolaki merges gentle ambient nuances with everything from crisp traditional instruments and field-recordings to carefully layered noise. Her breadth of knowledge quickly distinguishes ‘Solitary, Vacant’, a gauzy drone track peppered with glitches, by elevating its mood with pastoral guitar and wordless vocals. It’s but the first of many instances where Dalot shapes concrete and lucid structures out of something we’d be forgiven for assuming would remain a zone-out composition. ‘When’ has barely gathered its glum melody when a percolating rhythm rises in the mix, leading to a sumptuous swirl of bass, distorted synths and languid guitar. Even when thick beat-programming swells into ‘Time To Be (Out Of Time)’, these evolutions never sound flashy so much as integral to Papadomanolaki’s unspoken narrative, which unfurls at such a deceiving pace you hardly notice when she lets the ambience win (as on ‘View From a Hill’).

Loop Over Latitudes’ quieter moments unveil Dalot’s aptitude for sound-collages, a secondary ace-in-sleeve that gives her airier compositions a palpable place and time. The distant sirens that squeeze into ‘Rewind’ might’ve felt obvious in the hands of a lazier songwriter but here they contrast an initial seaside setting as though we’re sitting in Papadomanolaki’s passenger seat, drifting back into the traffic artery of a congested city. Loop Over Latitudes doesn’t deserve or plead for exclamation-ridden reactions; it’s a more inert listening experience, where the actual and imaginary aspects of Dalot’s songwriting play with your head.