We’re pleased to welcome poppy post-rock outfit Dog Unit to Ramsgate on Oct 4th!
The band make instrumental music that leans just as heavily on the tune-first, purist pop qualities of Burt Bacharach or the Strokes as much as it does the groove and ambiance of the group’s post-rock forebears like Stereolab. Atmospheric build-ups dramatically leading to frantic bangers…
“By taking influence from electronica, krautrock and shoegaze, the band to rid themselves from the shackles of genre, freeing them up to go wherever the hell they want” – Loud and Quiet
Midway through ‘At Home’, Dog Unit’s debut album, at the end of the record’s fourth earworm in succession, there’s a pause for breath. It’s the first time the music has come to a halt since the LP began—the first time this ribbon of sound has been cut, after twenty-plus minutes of motorik groove, nagging riff, and insistent hook—and as a result, it also serves as perhaps the clearest indicator yet that ‘At Home’ is more than just a collection of individually wound super-melodic instrumental rock songs; it’s a suite of music precision-engineered for a single sitting, complete with resting stops, signposts and tiny diversions in just the right places along the way.
Anyone who’s seen Dog Unit live won’t be surprised by what that pause signifies: indeed, this knack for world creation has been the band’s MO since their inception in 2019, writing and performing music designed to arc over the course of an uninterrupted hour, with the four Londoners’ musical idiosyncrasies combining for just the right recipe: Henry Scowcroft and Sam Walton on guitars that alternate between howling feedback and poised melodicism, James Weaver, a pop-dub bass maestro whose minimalist style reveals a genius for conciseness, and motorik drummer Lucy Jamieson, the most reliable timekeeper this side of an atomic clock. Together, on stage or on record, there’s a sense that this isn’t four musicians, but one 16-limbed creature guiding its listeners on an undulating journey of sleek modernist wonder, like a bullet train scything beautifully through Japanese countryside.
In short, ‘At Home’ is Dog Unit’s first major statement. That statement may be wordless, but it’s also sonically and conceptually articulate: here are four friends and native Londoners making an album in their home city that’s custom-built to feel enveloping, warm and transporting as listeners wend their way through its running order. Put simply, with this debut record of all-encompassing world-building, Dog Unit are inviting you to lap up those tunes, bathe in those washes of sound, and yes, even revel in those pauses—ultimately, they want you to feel At Home.
“Masterfully toys with generic song structure while retaining a real sense of fun, swiftly avoiding any self-indulgence in the process” – Loud and Quiet
“Instrumental music can be difficult to win people over, but Dog Unit claim to be less unoriginal and more refreshing, a promise they deliver with a delicious push-and-pull of both intensity and tranquillity” – Far Out
