“Holy Ghost” is taken from Young Fathers’ third full length album, Cocoa Sugar, which was released in March via Ninja Tune. The record – produced, written and recorded by the band throughout 2017.Young Fathers play their next show on June 30th at Roskilde Festival. Directed by Oscar Hudson-renowned for his videos for the likes of Radiohead (‘Lift’), Bonobo (‘No Reason’) and Young Thug & Carnage (‘Homie’) among others-the video uses a rare, high powered military thermal camera (or as Young Fathers’ Graham ‘G’ Hastings describes it: “Shot in Infra-Dead™”). Filmed on location in Perthshire, Scotland, the “Holy Ghost” video combines cinematography, surveillance and choreography to unique effect.

“Holy Ghost”, director Oscar Hudson on the video:

“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 they 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.”

The band has also recently announced a November & December 2018 UK headline tour. The six date tour will include their biggest headline show to date – at London’s legendary 5000 capacity O2 Academy Brixton

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