Turn Right and Right Again was written in between lockdowns then recorded in May by super-producer/mixer David Wrench, one half of audiobooks and known for his work with Frank Ocean, the xx, Caribou, David Byrne, Manic Street Preachers and Goldfrapp, at his studio in Hackney. The EP was then mixed by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) in upstate New York and mastered by James Trevascus at Invada, the studio run by Geoff Barrow (Portishead, BEAK>) in Bristol.
Dog Unit describe their sound as “a rock band’s interpretation of electronic music, so all the signifiers of dance music – build and drop, lots of emphasis on pulse, repetition and interesting cross-rhythms, melodies posing as riffs etc – but filtered into a two-guitars-bass-and-drums line-up. It’s instrumental rock music/post-rock you want to dance to.”
Of the EP’s genesis, the band offers: “After the first lockdown, we decided to start getting together every Monday night for the sake of our sanities, and the new EP was borne from that.
“There’s a sense of catharsis, tension-then-release and joy to it, all indirectly fuelled by the chaos and stress and isolation of lockdown. Monday night Dog Unit sessions were definitely the highlight of our respective weeks, and we hope that joy of communing, playing together, and being social after such a long period of isolation comes through in the music.”
Alongside ‘The Rule of Six’, the EP finds the band moving between spaghetti western trip-hop sludge-metal (‘Absolute Unit’), sky-high drone-dub (‘Pyramid Scheme’) and, on title track ‘Turn Right and Right Again’, unabashed stadium-filling euphoria.
The EP is a follow-up to 2020’s Barking to Gospel, which received nationwide radio play and critical acclaim, was named 3rd-best EP of 2020 by recordstore.co.uk and was featured on Rough Trade Shop’s best-of-2020 Counterculture compilation alongside Andrew Weatherall, Dry Cleaning, Jane Weaver and The Avalanches.
Dog Unit sound like electronic music played by a rock band, or post-rock you can dance to: driving, insistent, intense, and joyous. Do call them: purveyors of entrancing drone, tactile texture, slow-mo polyrhythm and skewiff riff. Don’t call them: Dogwai.
Dog Unit is Lucy Jamieson (drums), Henry Scowcroft (guitars), Sam Walton (guitars/omnichord/Rhodes), and James Weaver (bass).