Hour

Immediate, passionate, occasionally dissonant, open, open, open, and very often sublime, Ease the Work is an undeniably grand statement from the instrumental ensemble Hour. Conceived by composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Michael Cormier-O’Leary (Friendship, 2nd Grade, Dear Life Records) and delivered live by nine musicians in early 2023, Ease the Work is where breathy timbre and cinematic swoon factor meet in communion.

Formed in the flourishing underground of West Philadelphia in the latter half of the 2010s, Hour has fluctuated in size and scope around Cormier-O’Leary’s clear yet open-ended harmonic framework and ambitious ear. Ease the Work builds on the bedrock of Hour’s first two records, Tiny Houses and Anemone Red, and represents the group at its most expansive in sound and membership.

Hour’s music cuts a broad pathway, and remains hard to classify or compare. Perhaps most at home beside work from Bill Frisell, Eiko Ishibashi, ECM Records, or the Louisville experimental chamber group Rachel’s, Ease the Work shows us life on the boundary of composition and improvisation. It reaches for the sweeping gestures and inspired pacing of classic film scores, Frank Sinatra ballads, and Scott Walker’s pop orchestra. It also retains the arresting intimacy of the band’s early work. Strings swell and harmonize in counterpoint with electric guitar, clarinet, and piano, while drums, synth pads, and field recordings complete the aural world.