Matthew is a singular artist who has a unique approach to building music from non-traditional sounds as well as instruments. Whether in the form of an orchestral film score, electronic dance record, exploration of the life of a pig or horse skeleton, or big band jazz, Matthew’s work is impossible to categorise; his groundbreaking approach makes him one of the most important British artists of his generation.
Matthew’s journey into film music began in 1999 with his score for Human Traffic. His collaborations with the French director Etienne Chatiliez on La confiance règne (2004) and Agathe Cléry (2008) demonstrated his ability to enrich diverse narratives with complex and emotive music. However, it was his partnership with the Chilean director Sebastián Lelio which cemented his credentials as a film composer of international importance. His score for A Fantastic Woman (2017) helped the film win both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Matthew continued his successful collaboration with Lelio with scores for Disobedience (2017), Gloria Bell (2018) and The Wonder (2022), the latter of which won the British Independent Film Award for Best Original Score. Matthew’s next collaboration with Sebastian, La Ola, is set to hit festivals this year.
Matthew has collaborated with film-maker Dea Kulumbegashvili on April (2025), which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival; Rebecca Lenkewitz on Hot Milk (2025) starring Emma Mackay, and with Daniel Kokotajlo on Starve Acre (2024) starring Matt Smith.
For television, Matthew has worked on a variety of projects including Noughts + Crosses (BBC One), Temple (Sky One), Honour (ITV), and The Beast Must Die (Britbox), with the latter receiving the Royal Television Society Award for Best Titles. His most recent work is the music for The Responder (series 1 and 2) for the BBC, starring Martin Freeman as a Liverpool cop on the verge of a nervous breakdown, with the score for series 1 nominated for a BAFTA.
Further recognition came in 2023 when Matthew was awarded the Ivor’s Academy’s Innovation Award in recognition of his pioneering work in electronic music and his experimental use of unconventional sounds as instrumentation. In 2024 he won The Best Large Ensemble Composition at the Ivor’s Classical Awards for his work The Horse.
As a film and television composer, Matthew creates a new sonic world from scratch based on the organic sounds of each narrative. The music becomes a physical extension of the story. With a clear intention to disrupt the status quo, Matthew collaborates best with like-minded filmmakers who want to change the world. He wants to create work which has a positive social impact by elevating underrepresented ideas and voices and amplifying radical stories which directly face pressing issues such as climate change and social justice.