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Jun 26, 2018 By Christopher Roberts Young Fathers

Scottish hip-hop trio Young Fathers released a new album, Cocoa Sugar, back in March via Ninja Tune. Now they have shared a new video for “Holy Ghost.” Oscar Hudson directed the video, which was filmed with a high-powered military thermal camera (or as Young Fathers’ Graham ‘G’ Hastings says in a press release, it was “shot in Infra-Dead”). Watch it below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Hudson had this to say about the video in a press release: “The film was shot on a long range thermal surveillance camera, a piece of kit generally used by the military for border security and other unfriendly war-zone type operations that involve spotting people who are a long way away. It was super difficult to actually get our hands on one as there aren’t very many of them out there and the ones that do exist circulate solely within the surveillance industry rather than the film industry. It was really interesting reaching out across that line because whilst the two worlds share so much in common, they speak entirely different languages and operate in very different ways. But after months of scouring the earth in search of one that wasn’t stuck in a warzone we found one 30 mins away in Hertfordshire (big thanks to Silent Sentinel who let us take it out!)

“I didn’t want to use the camera for it’s haunting aesthetic alone, nor do a video medley of experiments with hot & cold stuff. Both those aspects are great but I was mostly interested in the camera’s range and functionality as a piece of surveillance gear. So we worked to make that aspect a core part of the language and narrative of the film - so the camera itself becomes a character as does it’s operator and we fully embraced it’s electronic movements and wobbles throughout.

“The whole film is shot from one single camera position 300m away from our location at the top of a wet mountain in Scotland. We spent the whole day up there wrestling with the camera which was more or less operated via a calculator. For such a high tech thing it had an amazingly lo-fi user interface, it was like a fax machine. We had to pre-program a list of every camera position then whilst shooting dial in and execute each individual move manually.”

Young Fathers surprised everyone by winning the Mercury Prize with their 2014 debut album, Dead. Previously they shared Cocoa Sugar tracks “In My View” (via a video and it was one of our Songs of the Week),“Lord,” and “Toy” (which was also one of our Songs of the Week). Plus there was a video for “Toy” and the band performed the song on Later with… Jools Holland.

Cocoa Sugar was our Album of the Week.

Read our Soundtracking the Resistance interview with Young Fathers on music and politics.

Read our recent interview with Young Fathers on Cocoa Sugar.

Read our review of Cocoa Sugar.

Young Fathers Tour Dates:

06/30 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival 2018
07/02 Montreux, Switzerland - Montreux Jazz Festival
07/05 Liège, Belgium - Les Ardentes Festival
07/12 Madrid, Spain - Mad Cool Festival 2018
07/14 Bilbao, Spain - BBK 2018
11/09 Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre
11/10 San Francisco, CA - The Independent (SOLD OUT)
11/11 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
11/14 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
11/16 Seattle, WA - The Showbox
11/17 Vancouver, BC - Venue
11/19 Chicago, IL - Bottom Lounge
11/20 Brooklyn, NY - Elsewhere (SOLD OUT)
11/21 Brooklyn, NY - Elsewhere
11/30 Glasgow, UK - O2 Academy
12/01 Leeds, UK - Stylus
12/02 Manchester, UK - Albert Hall
12/04 Newcastle, UK - Boiler Shop
12/05 Bristol, UK - O2 Academy
12/11 London, UK - O2 Academy Brixton

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