Father Hell releases new single 'I Still Love You The Same As I Always Did'. Debut album 'Trust Some Machines' out 4th December

 Sunderland-raised songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Father Hell (aka Mattie Vant) today shares new single 'I Still Love You The Same As I Always Did' - lifted from his upcoming debut album Trust Some Machines, out 4th December. Father Hell will mark the release of his debut album with a secret hometown show in Sunderland on 4th December, and a now sold-out headline show at SJQ (Servant Jazz Quarters), London on 10th December.

Introduced by two previous singles 'Talking To God' and 'Bottle That Happiness', Father Hell's debut album Trust Some Machines is a revelatory body of work. Confronting personal demons and creative stasis, it's a document of rebellion in every sense of the word. "It is the only record I could have made in my current given circumstances," says Vant.

Against the constant demands of screens, algorithms and his own self-doubt, Vant switched off his phone and gave himself seven days to make something he couldn’t endlessly correct. Recorded directly to an analogue four-track, the album lets mistakes stand, voices falter and seemingly simple songs unravel. Nylon-string guitar and cello collide with cheap synthesisers, warped tape and manipulated vocals, turning intimate songwriting into something increasingly strange and disorientating.

New single ‘I Still Love You The Same As I Always Did’ finds Vant embracing the simplicity that became central to making the album. Built around his voice and guitar, Sophie Sayer’s cello and a cheap 80s keyboard’s vibraphone setting, its spare arrangement gives each part room, before settling into an extended, repeating closing passage.

On the new single, Vant said:

"I Still Love You The Same As I Always Did is my favourite track on the record. It’s one of those songs where I have no idea where it came from and I can’t quite believe I managed to capture it, even more so now I’ve had some distance from it.

"It’s all about the dynamics and the parts and also not giving into the temptation to overly complicate things. I wrestled with the repetitive nature of the end section for a while and eventually had to make the call to stick with it due to the time constraints. It’s one of those that I would have probably overcooked and over thought and given up on if I’d been working on it digitally."

At the heart of Trust Some Machines is a struggle to find meaning and connection in a world that feels increasingly absurd. Tenderness, wry humour and unease run through songs whose contradictions Vant allows to remain unresolved. Making the album meant accepting that he didn’t need to understand everything he created.

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."

Sayer joined Vant for two days during the week-long sessions, her scheduled visits to add cello parts providing deadlines around which the songs had to take shape. Vant first began to understand the record as a whole while listening back on a train to Liverpool, where Mike Halls (Clean Cut Kid) would help complete it through additional production, mixing and mastering.

For Vant, Father Hell and Trust Some Machines represent 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 'I Still Love You The Same As I Always Did' is out now. Father Hell will mark the release of the album with headline shows in Sunderland and London.

LIVE DATES

1. 04 December - Sunderland, Secret Venue
2. 10 December - SJQ, London (Sold Out)

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