Hour House is the duo Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna, previously of the long running improvised sextet Castings. In Hour House, the two explore the possibilities of how analog and digital recordings and sound collage can conjure and reflect the poetics of a place. The duo’s search for sounds and sites forms the narrative of Hour House. Their spatial-sonic research has led them to both built and natural spaces, places of folk-lore, failed industry, remote histories, and threatened landscapes. Hour House craft field recordings into compositions, and after electronic manipulation, the works become surreal sonic phantasms. More than simply documents, the traces of these environments are stretched and magnified into intense, sensuous experiences of space dissolving into the passage of time.
After numerous live shows in Melbourne, and a limited cassette release on Altered States Tapes, Hour House released their debut album on Penultimate Press, which was included in The Wire’s top 50 records of 2015. On the back of this record, Hour House was invited to tour Europe in 2016 with Graham Lambkin and Mark Harwood, playing Glasgow’s Counterflows festival as well as shows at Café OTO in London, and in Brussels for the Kraak art collective. In addition, Hour House have also contributed a composition designed for radio, which appeared on Ears have Ears (FBI radio Sydney AUS). In mid-2017, Hour House completed a residency at BigCi, NSW Australia, which will form the basis of their forthcoming 2018 LP.
Panhandler Magazine 