Father Hell announces debut album 'Trust Some Machines' out 4th December, shares lead single 'Bottle That Happiness'

Sunderland-raised songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mattie Vant today announces Trust Some Machines, his debut album as Father Hell, alongside new single 'Bottle That Happiness'.

Across Trust Some Machines, Vant takes the familiar language of the singer-songwriter album somewhere considerably stranger. Nylon-string guitar, voice and cello give way to cheap 80s synthesisers, manipulated vocals and warped tape across an body of work Vant describes as "the only record I could have made."

To make it, he gave himself a week. "You’re going to have to walk the dog, because I’m not going to be back for a week," he joked to his partner before disappearing into the studio. Working 12-hour days and committing to whatever emerged, Vant ultimately wrote around 75% of Trust Some Machines during those sessions.

Lead single 'Bottle That Happiness' was one of the few songs Vant brought into the studio already written, and became an early reference point for everything that followed. Built around the idea of preserving moments of pure joy to draw upon during harder times, its initial warmth is gradually unsettled by cello and harmonica, introducing the tension between beauty and unease that runs through the full album.

On the release of his new single, Vant said:

"'Bottle That Happiness' came from the idea of being able to draw on moments of pure joy in times of hardship. It also tries to question what is valuable in life and where our focus should lie. The cello and harmonica were added once I took it into the room and they give a real Lynchian darkness to it. In many ways this song was the start point for the whole record and gave me something to reference when composing the other tracks.”

Trust Some Machines was made largely on an analogue four-track tape machine, a self-imposed restriction that forced Vant to abandon the endless correction and second-guessing that had previously followed him into the studio. Mistakes remained, tempos shifted and tunings wavered. With no click track and little opportunity to undo decisions, Vant worked reactively, allowing the limitations of the recording process to dictate where the songs went next.

What began as an intention to make a record using only vocals, guitar and cello soon expanded. Keyboards and vocal samplers found their way onto the four-track, their more synthetic textures sitting strangely alongside its unstable acoustic elements. The distinction between the two gradually began to disappear: electronic sounds became tactile and imperfect, while voices shift in pitch and character across a record that becomes increasingly disorientating and otherworldly as it unfolds.

Vant says of the making of the album:

"It felt like being a kid again. When you first start making music you’re just doing it for the sake of enjoyment and discovery. The nature of working purely on an analogue four-track tape machine for the first time also informed that feeling of freedom. The format lends itself to embracing mistakes and living with things you’d otherwise try and cover up, comp or endlessly repeat until they are ‘correct’. Once you realise there is no such thing as ‘correct’, you naturally stop questioning every little detail and start to enjoy the bigger picture."

That surrender became fundamental to Trust Some Machines, with songs unintentionally informing one another as the album began to assume a narrative of its own. He only fully understood what he had made while compiling the recordings on a train to Liverpool, where Mike Halls (Clean Cut Kid) would help complete the album.

Trust Some Machines follows Father Hell's standalone debut single 'Let Go', released earlier this year. For Vant, Father Hell represents a fresh start: a space in which contradiction and experimentation can exist without the expectations attached to his previous work, and where the project itself is free to continue evolving in real time.

Father Hell's debut album Trust Some Machines is out 4th December via Nordic Records. New single 'Bottle That Happiness' is out now. Father Hell plays Southwark Legion Community Club in London this Saturday, 26th September.

LIVE DATES

26 September - Southwark Legion Community Club, London

Trust Some Machines track list

1. Always Descending

2. Your Shadow On The Ground

3. Talking To God

4. Unai

5. I Still Love You The Same As I Always Did

6. I Try

7. 1000 Drummers Bleeding, Through The Floor, The Walls & The Ceiling

8. No More Flowers

9. Bottle That Happiness

10. Rejecting The Absurd

11. Symmetry

12. Bassist Needed For Hardcore Power Violence Band

13. Live Laugh Love