Child of the Parish is Forging a Unique Sound

INTERVIEW

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INTERVIEW ✦

Powerhouse duo Child of the Parish has officially unveiled their infectious track, “Always The Fool,” serving as an enthralling pre-cursor to their debut album Sweet Surrender, set for release in September of this year. This fresh release from the pair follows the buzz-worthy success of their earlier EPs, (Make It Better and Quiet Life), utilizing the next era of their career as an opportunity to recalibrate their sound while pushing their already impressive skillsets to new limits.

At the time of its initial creation, Child of the Parish brothers Ben and Tom Vella initially conceived the upcoming Sweet Surrender as a mixtape project but found greater fulfillment in allowing their creativity to take the lead. And as a result of their desire to embrace experimentation and artistic liberation, the brothers have effectively committed to forging their own path through classic house and dance music, combining glitchy electronic sounds with elements of indie, disco, and funk.

With the pair’s new single out now, we spoke with Child of the Parish to learn about their independently produced track and their highly anticipated album.

Child of the Parish 

Congratulations on your exciting return! Can you delve into the origin of your latest single "Always The Fool," and your general intentions with the track?

Ben Vella: We’ve had a few tracks in the past that have been quite influenced by retro electronica/disco, there’s something about the combination of live parts like guitars, and stacked vocals, with analog synths that really appeals. Across the album, we’ve experimented with more layered, developing tracks, but the best disco tracks have a real simplicity to them — there’s actually very few parts playing in “Always The Fool,” but what’s there knits together.

It’s been stated that your upcoming debut album Sweet Surrender is about experimenting with different styles. How did this desire for experimentation influence the overall sound and direction of the album?

Tom Vella: Initially, it was conceived as more of a mixtape — we had a lot of little ideas and demos that we were too excited to leave as they wouldn’t have fitted onto a regular record with our previous singles, so we just decided to finish everything off and put it out as a mixtape. But our obsessive natures kicked in and we wrote tons more for it, writing instrumentals and linking tracks and the whole thing turned into a bit of a passion project. By the time we finished, it was obvious it had to be a proper album, but it’s cool the whole thing was written with a very open mind, with no focus on radio singles, etc., it’s definitely turned it into something quite fresh and interesting to listen to.

How does the blending of glitchy, electronic sounds with more organic elements in your music contribute to the themes explored in Sweet Surrender?

Ben Vella: It’s always something we’ve been interested in, we grew up listening to artists like Beck, Primal Scream, LCD Soundsystem, and Soulwax who mashed up genres and influences. Quite often I think it might work against us leaping around genres so much! But we’re sort of magpies when it comes to listening to different sounds, it’s always tempting to do something different when you have the chance.

It’s also another project that you’re entirely spearheading which is extremely impressive! What motivated you to take on the production of the album independently — and what has that freedom allowed you to explore through this new music?

Tom Vella: We’ve always produced our own music really, but in the past, our mixers have been involved in more production, but on this record, we were mixed by Shuta Shinoda who’s a fantastic mixer but wasn’t involved in production. We bought some new equipment and better speakers and forced ourselves to get a bit more professional with our sound -- it was a good learning experience, not having in your head that someone will eventually fix this makes you cherry-pick your sounds more! It’s probably a slightly truer reflection of what we’re into musically.

Child of the Parish

Ahead of its release, the album is currently described as having a mixtape-like feel. How did this concept evolve into a cohesive album?

Ben Vella: So we had a bunch of older tracks we loved but weren’t necessarily ‘singles’, and a lot of little demos that were exciting snippets, so initially the main goal was just to finish everything off and see where we were at with it. But as you’re doing that you’re also naturally writing new stuff, which I guess is bound to fit in with the vibe of the other stuff you’re looking at. What we ended up with was really interesting but was quite up and down in terms of vibe and influence. We’ve always been fans of quite proggy concept albums that link tracks together with instrumentals and feel like a bit of a journey — we were both obsessed with “Hurry Up We’re Dreaming” — so I think it’s these that tie the sounds together more.

You’ve mentioned that following your instincts led to greater productivity than focusing on writing a hit. Can you elaborate on how this approach shaped the overall sound of Sweet Surrender?

Tom Vella: I don’t think it’s always a bad thing trying to write singles, at their best they’re like a concentrated, succinct version of what you’re trying to do with a band. But at their worst, you end up with an album with two good singles and eight other bad singles! They can kill depth on a record and lead to it being very samey. Removing the concept of singles from an album entirely means you never have to spend time worrying about not having that ‘big hit’ which can be quite toxic, and ironically I think we’ve ended up with some quite strong singles probably because we weren’t thinking about it!

From a collaborative standpoint, how has working with Shuta Shinoda influenced the recording and mixing process of the album?

Ben Vella: It was fantastic. The bizarre thing is how we met — he DM’d me because he loved one of our previous tracks, I knew his work with Ghost Poet and Hot Chip so I was really interested, I said we should meet up and he said he lived in a tiny village in rural Hertfordshire no one had ever heard of — it turned out we live in the same village! It’s literally got one pub, a post office, Shuta Shinoda, and Child of the Parish — thankfully we got on otherwise it would have been a bit awkward at the pub! As I said before he was purely mixing, which as we’re relatively new to production meant it was quite a learning curve, mainly in sound selection. There were some tracks, like “Always the Fool” actually, that came together instantly so we’d got the sound selection right, but a couple that were tricky and we had to go back to the drawing board on once they’d had a light shone on them. That was actually a really invaluable learning experience.

Finally, while working on the album, what’s been the one consistent thing (song, quality, change, etc.) that you’ve been most excited to share with fans?

Tom Vella: It’s definitely finally being able to give our fans an LP. Because of covid and moving labels we’ve had a really long drawn out process as a band that delayed having an album. Maybe we’re musical dinosaurs but we still love albums! They should be the whole point of being in a band, being able to get across the depth you’re reaching for as an artist, to experiment, and take the listener on a journey. We’re really happy we’ve finally been able to do that for our listeners.