After May 2023’s collaborative Galaxy EP with Sam Poggioli, aka Sampology, Australian drummer-producer Charlie Hill returns to Poggioli’s Middle Name Records for Yore, his debut solo EP and the first release on the label that is not a solo or collaborative Sampology record.

Recorded between 2019 and 2022, Yore lives and breathes in the slipstreams between the vibrancy of jazz-funk, neo-soul and downbeat and the machine beats of house, techno and broken beat. Across its six tracks, Hill combines recordings of himself drumming with programmed rhythms, synthesisers, and a painstakingly curated personal library of samples of friends and family playing instruments and singing. From the modern trip-hop dreamscapes of ‘A Space For A Space’ to the syncopated rhythms and rubbery bassline bounce of ‘Yemlaad’, the EP is an embarrassment of riches from a bold and intuitive new talent.

A trained jazz drummer, Hill got his start in the Meanjin (Brisbane) live music scene in 2015 while studying at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. After completing his degree in 2019, he spent several months losing himself on nightclub dancefloors across Europe before returning home on the eve of the global pandemic. Over the following months, he began teaching himself the fundamentals of electronic music production, honing his craft during the listless ennui and uncertainty of Australia’s lockdown years.

Although the term Yore traditionally refers to times from long ago, for Hill, it’s more representative of how the passage of time can reframe our memories through a nostalgic rose-tinged lens. “Yore is a dance-inspired release made with a sample library made up of snippets of recordings of close friends and family,” he says. “The collaging of all these recordings represents many amazing memories of the people that mean so much to me.”

Arriving during a moment of bubbling post-pandemic creativity within Meanjin’s underground music scene, Yore locates Hill within an Antipodean tradition of Australian and New Zealand drummer-producers, including Clever Austin (Hiatus Kaiyote), Julien Dyne, Myele Manzanza and Cory Champion (Borrowed CS, Clear Path Ensemble). In the same mode as these talents, outside of his solo production work and collaborations with Sampology, you can also find Hill playing in fellow Meanjin future soul artist Squidgeninni’s live band.