Father Hell shares 'Talking To God' + announces debut headline show. Debut album 'Trust Some Machines' out 4th December

Debut solo album from Mattie Vant - Fresh from full UK tour supporting Demob Happy London show this Saturday

 Sunderland-raised songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Father Hell (aka Mattie Vant) today releases new single 'Talking To God' - the second reveal from his upcoming debut album Trust Some Machines, out 4th December. The release follows lead single 'Bottle That Happiness', shared last month. Father Hell will mark the release his debut album with a headline show at SJQ (Servant Jazz Quarters), London on 10th December.

'Talking to God' pairs strummed nylon-string guitar with a vocal that shifts between disdain and uncertainty. The arrangement is spare and unvarnished, with abrupt cello stabs breaking into the space around his voice. Towards the end, both his delivery and the accompaniment begin to unravel, as though he’s becoming increasingly caught up in his own thoughts.

On the release of his new single, Vant said:

"Talking To God has a very classic structure with each verse having a set up, expansion and resolution that is reminiscent of traditional folk writing. It was a fun puzzle to create and play with. I was originally stuck on an alternative version of the opening line (“I didn’t do it for money, I didn’t do it for love”) but upon hearing the iconic opening line of the film Double Indemnity (“I killed him for money and a woman...”) I realised that this twist on what I already had would make for a more interesting direction to follow and it kind of wrote itself from there."

Across debut album Trust Some Machines, Vant takes the familiar language of the singer-songwriter album somewhere considerably stranger as Father Hell. 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.

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.

For Vant, Father Hell and Trust Some Machines 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 'Talking To God' is out now. Tickets for Father Hell's debut headline show at SJQ, London are available now here, with limited 5 & free tickets available for students and low income households.

LIVE DATES

10 December - SJQ, London

Trust Some Machines - artwork & 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