Fire up the tube amps. Dogmile is back in the game, and the new single “Alight” is a hazy riff on what modern rock can be when it’s stripped of pretence and soaked in analogue grit. One from an artist in a basement, wrestling with clarity and churning out something timeless in the process.
Serving as the lead track for the forthcoming EP Static Retracted (out October 21st), “Alight” lives in a beautifully murky space. The overall vibe is one of timeless unease, a song that feels both familiar and strangely alien—which is exactly the point.
The man behind Dogmile describes the project as “down to Earth yet also alien,” and that dichotomy is at the very heart of this track. You can hear it in the push-and-pull between the warm, organic jangle of the guitars and the cool, detached sheen of the synths. The vision for the EP was to “cut through the noise and pull back any external static,” a search for clarity by wading directly through the muck. “Alight” sounds like that journey—it’s not the clean destination, but the gloriously messy, compelling trek to get there.
Dogmile played every instrument and produced the track himself, holed up in his friend’s basement. In a move that would make any garage-rock purist nod in approval, he recorded all the drum parts onto cassette tape, baking a layer of warm, lo-fi texture directly into the song’s backbone. This is the real, magnetic-particle deal.
With support from icons like the ever-discerning Henry Rollins and institutions like Rough Trade, Dogmile is clearly on a path that the true believers are watching. “Alight” is proof that you can chase clarity without sanitising your sound, and that the best rock music often comes from a basement, not a boardroom.