.Here’s an observation about Dog Unit, the band that veteran Radio X broadcaster John Kennedy has called “one of the best bands on the planet right now”: they just don’t stop. Midway through their debut album, At Home, at the end of the record’s fourth earworm in succession, there’s a pause for breath, but that pause is remarkable because 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 Dog Unit make far more than just a collection of individually wound super-melodic instrumental rock songs; they make long-form swathes 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, at their sell-out shows at London’s Lexington, Victoria and St Pancras Old Church, or at festivals up and down the country, won’t be surprised by any of the above: indeed, this knack for world creation has been the band’s MO since their inception, writing and performing music designed to arc over the course of an uninterrupted hour, with the four Londoners’ musical idiosyncrasies meshing for just the right recipe: Henry Scowcroft and Sam Walton on guitars that alternate between howling solo 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.

With At Home, Dog Unit have realised their dream of an album of 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 Tortoise or Stereolab: across its 42 minutes, there’s frantic bangers and bubbling atmosphere, rise and fall, point and counterpoint, echoes and callbacks, and the kind of production intricacies that only become more detailed the closer you listen.

But, zooming out for a moment, At Home is also the latest step on a longer path for the London quartet, one that began in 2020 with their self-released first EP, Barking to Gospel (mixed by Kieran Hebden, a.k.a. Four Tet), and continued with 2022’s Turn Right And Right Again EP on Brace Yourself Records (recorded by audiobooks’ David Wrench with Hebden continuing on mixing duties).

Both those EPs drew critical acclaim from publications including The Sunday Times, MOJO, and Loud And Quiet and radio support from the likes of Steve Lamacq on 6Music and John Kennedy on RadioX, and remain lovely vignettes of the nascent Dog Unit sound, all wistful melancholia wrapped in a joyful noise. But At Home represents an evolution for the band in pretty much every field: compared to the EPs, the debut album's composition and arrangement is more considered, ambitious, and thoughtfully executed, the recording is more lovingly put together, and the production is more sonically adventurous. The album is built with architectural exactitude, but that never detracts from the experience of the record — indeed, it contributes to it, resulting in a free-flowing musical environment that, as well as feeling like a series of songs, creates a world you inhabit.

That artistic leap forward has been recognised by a flurry of breathless reviews both in the UK and across Europe, including 4 stars in The Times and MOJO, and 9/10 in Loud And Quiet. The band are currently booked for six summer festival appearances, and will tour their debut album extensively in autumn 2024, where their unique live setup, in which a boiler-suited quartet, seated in horseshoe formation, play straight through in a gloriously intense unbroken performance style, will blow minds across the UK.

Praise for Dog Unit

"One hell of a movie, directed with all the mastery of a Hitchcock… sets the pulse racing." - MOJO (4 stars)

"With bluesy fret-busting, velvety jazz inversions, and amorphous wah-wah tones, it’s music to get lost in, but you won’t forget it’s playing." - Flood 

“A different type of musical texture, and a very pretty and moving thing it is too.”

- Steve Lamacq, BBC 6Music

"David Gilmour-like guitar melodies, space-age keyboard reverberations and the odd jazz workout, all held down by tight, propulsive rhythms... a balm for grey days everywhere.”

- The Times (4 stars)

"A thrill-ride of instrumental excitement… one of the best bands on the planet right now."

- John Kennedy, Radio X

“Dog Unit paint pictures with sound, with vivid and kaleidoscopic results" 

- The Sunday Times