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An old adage holds that although all music is sound, not all sound is music. Of course, Maria Papadomanolaki - a.k.a sound artist Dalot - will literally hear nothing of it. Whether sampling gulls from her window in Brighton or sirens ripping through New York City, all sound has value. Add to this a mix of instruments such as tablas, guitar and glockenspiel pureed to perfection inside a computer and you get Dalot's latest effort Loop Over Latitudes. Although "ambient" is a worthy descriptor, influences ranging from soundwash engineers Stars of the Lid, eco-glitch pioneers Boards of Canada and minimal multi-instrumentalist Colleen make comparisons difficult. Papadomanolaki's roots in noise rock and her proper education in music help to create a fine balance between knowing how to sculpt the perfect sound as well when to shatter it. From launch, a Dalot track may ascend to gilded heights aboard an angelic vocal or divine melody or, conversely, drop the listener into a smoggy dystopia alive only with the whirring of dying machines. Papadomanolaki's devotion to the full spectrum of sound-as-art has led to collaborations with events such as the Icelandic Festival of Experimental Film and the Athens Video Art Festival as well as with Resonance FM. As with Dalot's first release - 2009's Flight Sessions EP (from which three tracks were added to Loop Over Latitudes) - Papadomanolaki's latest work is sequenced much like one of the novels she once studied in her native Greece. To listen to a Dalot album on shuffle would be like re-ordering the acts of a play based solely on the appeal of each set. Although she is probably the last person who would enforce how her music should be heard, it is nonetheless difficult to divide the storyteller from the musician. In the end, even she would have to agree that they are inseparable. [bio by Aaron Johnston | n5MD] www.dalot.net/ www.myspace.com/dalot http://www.facebook.com/pages/dalot/105743329889?ref=nf User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.