Matt Hill is from Missouri, but you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s time traveled to these shores from late-seventies Italy. His prog-driven synth project Umberto pays tribute to the Italo soundtracks of Dario Argento and company, and not just musically; prior releases make references to imagined horror movies, with track titles like From the Grave‘s “Intermission” and “End Credits” and Prophecy of the Black Widow‘s “Someone Chasing Someone Through A House,” which is happily followed by “Everything Is Going To Be Okay.”
He’s got a new album coming out on Not Not Fun called Confrontations, our first taste of which comes in the form of “Night Fantasy.” The general idea is the same: downtempo beats, slasher-movie synths, creeping melodies that neither perfectly resolve nor arrive at the catastrophic denouement one might expect. But this feels a bit less…soundtrack-y, if you will. Whereas it’s been difficult to divorce Umberto’s past work from its cinematic connotations, “Night Fantasy” is less beholden to an imagined screenplay and more straightforward with its charms. That’s probably a good thing; we can all enjoy getting on our Goblin grind, but you’ve got to branch out sometime, right?
Confrontations is February 5th via Not Not Fun
