Umberto

Matt Hill, an electronic musician based in Los Angeles, records under the Umberto name and crafts material that evokes horror-film scores from the 1970s and 1980s while also nodding to contemporaneous strains such as Italo-disco and ambient. After issuing his 2009 debut From the Grave..., the project swiftly attracted a dedicated following within the retro-synthesizer community, prompting commissions for actual film music including the 2012 release Night Has a Thousand Screams. Though Hill has largely operated Umberto as a solo endeavor, live and recorded work has incorporated additional players, notably Justin Carrick.

Born in Kansas City, Hill served as a touring member of Justin Wright’s psych- and Krautrock-leaning Expo ’70 project throughout the late 2000s. Wright’s Sonic Meditations label originally released From the Grave... in 2009; Permanent Records later reissued it on vinyl in 2010, with several further pressings following increased demand. The second album, Prophecy of the Black Widow, appeared the same year on the Los Angeles imprint Not Not Fun. In 2011 Umberto issued a series of singles and EPs, among them the action-movie-themed 7-inch Freeze! and the more expansive Final Exit and Welcome to the Chillzone.

Rock Action, the label run by Mogwai, put out Umberto’s first dedicated soundtrack, Night Has a Thousand Screams, in 2012. The project returned to Not Not Fun for the 2013 album Confrontations and the 2014 12-inch Temple Room, which expanded the opening track of Prophecy of the Black Widow into two extended disco mixes. Additional singles, including “La Llorona” and “The Child,” surfaced in 2014. Death Waltz, known for reissuing vintage horror scores, released the 2015 soundtrack Law Unit, a collaboration with Antoni Maiovvi, along with the standalone single “In the Night.” Umberto rejoined Not Not Fun in 2016 for the full-length Alienation, which featured vocals by Edward Tonoyan and Viktoria Gokun and leaned further into 1980s ethereal and darkwave textures than prior efforts.

After a three-year hiatus, Hill signed with Thrill Jockey and issued Helpless Spectator in 2019, enlisting cellist and bowed-banjo player Aaron Martin as well as pedal-steel guitarist “Idaho Joe” Winslow. Although the album marked a departure, he soon revisited horror-disco on the Outskirts of Reno EP, released by Giallo Disco.