About
The Twelve Hour Foundation's sound mixes elements of musique concrète, 1970s library music, early electronic pop, and the Radiophonic work of John Baker and Paddy Kingsland.
The majority of their tracks are built using a pair of 40-year-old synthesizers, mixed with treated field recordings and sounds created from samples of household objects: plastic tubing, bottles, corks and a wire draining rack, alongside various electrical appliances and the human body.
The Lighter Side of Concrete received great reviews and airplay by the likes of Stuart Maconie (The Freak Zone), Gareth Moses (More Than Human), Pete Wiggs (The Séance / Saint Etienne), Belbury Parish Magazine (Ghost Box Records) and the Project Moonbase podcast. It also featured as a Ghost Box guest release.
The Lighter Side of Concrete received great reviews and airplay by the likes of Stuart Maconie (The Freak Zone), Gareth Moses (More Than Human), Pete Wiggs (The Séance / Saint Etienne), Belbury Parish Magazine (Ghost Box Records) and the Project Moonbase podcast. It also featured as a Ghost Box guest release.
Having created jingles for Project Moonbase and Glasgow’s pop-up art station Radiophrenia, the duo began releasing music on a variety of labels including their own Disques Boum imprint.
Live shows have included Supernormal Festival 2015, The Delaware Road events (Reading, Kelvedon Hatch nuclear bunker and New Zealand Farm) ,slots with Go Kart Mozart, Happy Meals, The Space Lady, Leafcutter John and many more, in addition to a tour of Scotland supporting screenings of Matt Hulse’s feature film Dummy Jim, to which the band contributed incidental music.
The Twelve Hour Foundation evoke distant, half-remembered experiences and objects … the grouting between slabs of memory.
Biographies
Polly Hulse
Polly has recorded with Jez in Death By Chocolate, contributing flute and vocals to the group’s most recent long-player Bric-a-Brac. She also features on the Hideki Kaji collaboration Hideki Spaghetti.
Sound for the Future, a feature film about the childhood band The Hippies, formed with her brothers in 1979, looks back at their life in Cambridge. Directed by her brother Matt, it was released to critical acclaim in 2020.
Jez Butler
Having experimented with electronic music in the early ‘80s, Jez moved to Bristol. In 1992, following stints as a drummer in variety of bands, he began recording under the alias Vision On, a library music-inspired project, releasing one EP: Who’s Afraid of De Wolfe in 1995.
Support from Japanese recording artist Cornelius led to collaborative projects for Mike Alway’s if… and él labels, working under a variety of guises with a core team and a range of vocalists including Hideki Kaji, Simon Fisher Turner, Louis Philippe, Ian Svenonius (David Candy) and Angela Tillett (Death By Chocolate).
Jez has since gone on to write for production music libraries, film, radio and promotional videos.