is about "harbor-bound boats never desiring to 'break free and sail'". "Diagonals" discusses "the materialistic escapism of the bourgeois European holiday." "Rainbo Conversation" is about revolution beginning "in the bedroom", where "nothing is more political than the personal". "Refractions in the Plastic Pulse" regards "human interaction amid the spectacle". "Contronatura" is "a dialogue between friends" which "calls for a quiet rebellion against nature […] and our baser natures", and later shifts "to a political tract that captures the album's mystifying artificial/natural spirit in its final moments". Composition 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". "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. The following track, "The Flower Called Nowhere", is a "waltz" that "weds a John Barry harpsichord riff with a cosmic MOR melody." 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. "Diagonals" pairs a marimba loop with a "mutant-funk jazz drum loop" sampled from Amon Düül II's "I Can't Wait". "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." "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", then "mutat[es] into snarled-up space-rock and metallic junglism – then back to its jaunty original refrain." "Parsec" is a "samba-flavored drum'n'bass track with a peaceful dub break." 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". Album closer "Contronatura" starts as "a chiming, intimate plaint through a thicket of massed, dank nature samples", and after "a two minute interlude of organic squishiness", progresses into "a thumping, gelatinous march rhythm", marking the album's "most danceable" sequence. Release Dots and Loops was released on 22 September 1997 in the United Kingdom by Duophonic Records, peaking at number 19