Award-winning Northern Rivers musician Matt Hill writes rolling, evocative music shaped by decades of genre-hopping with creative collaborations across film, theatre, dance & sound art.

A multi-instrumentalist & composer who brings a lifetime of sonic exploration to everything he touches.

Originally from Canberra, Matt Hill cut his teeth in 1990s New York, drumming with indie grunge band Cow in Plaid while working at Tower Records. He moved to Lismore for a guitar performance degree and then on to Melbourne, where he joined ambient instrumental trio amphibian — performing at festivals and major venues across Australia, supporting artists like David Bridie, Ed Kuepper and Scanner, and touring the UK. Between amphibian shows, he spent time field recording in Europe and Japan before heading to far north Queensland to dive deep into experimental electronic music as part of his PhD. Matt returned to the Northern Rivers in the early 2000s with a young family winning the NCEIA Dolphin Award for Best Album with the mostly instrumental Warm Keep Warm. A run of four song-based albums followed — including his recent release, Little Untold Stories.

The new album features 12 tracks inspired by a patchwork of tales collected on a recent trip to Cornwall, London, and Berlin. The stories include aquatic encounters on the South West Coast Path, reflections on installation art in Berlin, stories from the Middle Ages of monks, clocks, and the patron saint of chronic pain and ice skating. There are encounters with overzealous divorcees and disruptive influencers at the London Covid memorial.

For these shows Matt will be performing stripped back arrangements on piano, Wurlitzer and guitar. Listeners can expect a serene atmosphere with echoes of Bowie, Nick Drake, and Husky.

Pete Cashew is a perfeck half of The Cashews: a local acoustic rockstar duo who’ve been responding-in-song to Canberra’s people, places and preoccupations since the early 2000s. It’s all good… together and apart. Sometimes Pete plays with drummer Clarke Finn, because given the chance anyone would!