ISHQ is composer Matt Hillier
Based in Cornwall Matt began exploring sound in the early 90's after buying a reel to reel tape machine and home keyboard from a local paper advertisement. At the time he had just started listening to more experimental music by early electronic acts as well as a lot of older psychedelic music and so he began to experiment along with some friends in all night jam sessions.
The early recordings were all very abstract but the beginning of his work as an Ambient / Soundscape artist. At this time Matt was an avid vinyl collector and met Jake Stephenson who was also a musician working as Optic eye and Alien Mutation. Jake introduced Matt to the Atari sequencer, the world of Midi and home recording as well as Kinetix records. This meeting eventually resulted in the two of them writing the album "Microcosm Macrocosm" and then Matt began to consider his own work. Many years later and after giving up writing for a number of years Matt moved to Cornwall and rebuilt the studio he had stored away and began working on new music with view to maybe releasing it himself. It was at this time he developed the idea of Virtual his record label and also began writing as ISHQ.
To cut a long story short having written one new track called Bhakti, Matt was convinced by his partner Jacqueline to send it off to some labels (Matt had long given up on labels as he got very little reaction to his earlier work) and he settled down on the artist name ISHQ. Interchill Records found the track on the end of a tape and emailed him. He subsequently developed ISHQ and released Orchid, his first album as ISHQ to huge acclaim. Since then ISHQ has come to be recognised as one of the world's foremost ambient artists and also one of the most illusive and inventive. ISHQ is instantly recognisable, otherworldly and often undescribable. In essence has a sublime and beautiful quality that both inspires the mind and also the heart in a very rare way.
After the release of Orchid in 2004 ISHQ is releasing his second full length album Sama on Electronic Soundscapes. A new chapter in ISHQ's soundscapes and a natural involvement in ISHQ's sound and production level. Pure class A analogue mastering and rich 3d artwork make Sama a "one of a kind" album.
