Searching for the ghost in the machine with Dog Unit

Best Fit’s conversation with the machine-like art/post-rockers opens, fittingly enough, with a discussion about technology. Whilst explaining this writer’s simple but effective system of recording Zoom interviews (hitting record on Garageband), guitarist Sam Walton interjects. “I wouldn’t knock Garageband – loads of records have been made on it. Grimes made her first three records on it. Then she ended up having kids with Elon Musk.” “Correlation doesn’t mean causation,” adds fellow guitarist Henry Scowcroft.The band, rounded out by bassist James Weaver and drummer Lucy Jamieson, would possibly take umbrage with the term ‘machine-like’, given that it can connote cold and/or unfeeling; incorrect descriptions of Dog Unit’s ultra-melodic motorik vistas. However, the tight, intricate instrumental rock of their second full-length Runners does conjure images of the 1932 classic Modern Times; those iconic scenes of Charlie Chaplin (a famously emotionally resonant filmmaker) caught up in the gears of a huge factory machine. Dog Unit’s music has the same ability to wrap you up in its machinations. You feel yourself moving lock-step with its momentum, your brainwaves synchronising with the e...