Dutch composer and guitarist Bram Stadhouders, Norwegian vocal artist Sidsel Endresen and  Brooklyn-based virtuoso drummer Jim Black played two awesome shows at Incubate 2010.

Both shows were recorded and shaped into the album “Bell Time” which will be released on November 15th by Muzieklab Brabant. BUT.. you can already stream the album on our Soundcloud page, or below!

ps.  The trio is doing two live performances in November:
Nov 10: Bimhuis, Amsterdam, NL
Nov 11: November Music, Den Bosch, NL

MDKLNKRT

All good things must come to an end, and thus also The Ex Files end. We’ve illustrated the first two decennia of The Ex‘ impressive music career, and by now you should have gotten a pretty good idea of The Ex’ legendary status and their importance to contemporary music. That is, if you didn’t have that idea already. Might you still not be convinced, then there’s only one thing left to do: come see ‘em at Incubate and let them convince you theirselves! Do it…

We’ll end this series now with some footage of their very impressive performance at the Holland Festival in 2000. Watch The Ex perform Dutch versions of their songs together with a 20-piece big band and Jan Mulder, who wrote the translations. Below that, some recent footage of The Ex playing with Ehtiopian jazz saxophonist Gétatchèw Mèkurya in 2009. Have fun, see you later, and don’t miss The Ex at Incubate!

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

The year 1999 sees The Ex touring all over Europe and the U.S. In February, The Ex play New York and Houston, and then tour the U.S. West together with Fugazi. Back in Europe they tour Germany, followed by the release of the joint Tortoise/The Ex collaboration for the In The Fishtank series, a special studio & recording project of music-company Konkurrent, who are The Ex’ distributors.

At the end of May The Ex celebrate their 20th anniversary at a sold-out Paradiso (The Netherlands’ number one club stage) in Amsterdam, where they invite artists such as Steve Albini’s Shellac (check out his comment on The Ex below), De Kift, Kamagurka & Herr Seele, and Eritrean vocal legend Tsehaytu Beraki. The week after, they tour Scandinavia together with Shellac. In October they tour Italy for the first time in 12 years, followed by Hungary and three shows in a row (with special guests) at Instant Chavirés in Paris, France. In December The Ex head back to the U.S. to tour the East coast, once again with Fugazi.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In 1996 Terrie goes on a year long round-trip through Africa. Although The Ex are supposed to have a sabbatical this year, it’s members are not idle. Singer Sok tours with the troubadouresque punk-folk posse De Kift, bass-player Luc can be heard on the album The Untraceable Cigar of melancholic free-jazz quartet Roof (featuring a.o. Tom Cora, check a clip above), and Andy plays with the energetic klezmer-noise outfit Kletka Red who release the CD Hijacking on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.

The next year G.W. Sok publishes Ex-rated, a collection of 69 used and unused lyrics he wrote during the first 17 Ex-years. The Ex are offered the “Jazz Compositie Opdracht” by the Dutch broadcasting company NPS: they are commissioned to compose an hour of music, and invite the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) to join them for the performance of it. Then the five-piece go back on the road, first in Holland, together with the Malian kora player Djibril Diabate, followed by the American East coast and Chicago.

In June 1998 they record their new CD in Chicago (USA), recorded and produced by Steve Albini, an old fan, in his recently built studio. The new album, released in October 1998, on Touch & Go USA and Ex Records Holland, is called Starters Alternators. The well-received album is dedicated to Tom Cora, who died earlier that year. After the Summer The Ex tour Holland, together with Lanaya, a trio from Mali, with a.o. Djibril Diabate.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In March 1992 The Ex finish their 7″ singles series with a 12″ single that doesn’t fit into the compilation-box. The next period sees The Ex slowly but surely moving more and more towards the jazz and improviational scene. Most of the year The Ex tour extensively with Tom Cora in the U.S. and Western Europe. In May they release the Live at the Bimhuis video, recordings from a special improvised concert they gave a year earlier.

The next year sees the release of And The Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders, their second release in collaboration with cellist Tom Cora. Concerts with Cora take the band to prestigious jazz-festivals such as Konfrontationen Nickelsdorf, Mimi and Moers. After another U.S. tour in 1994 with Tom Cora, The Ex work together with musician/performer Joop van Brakel (a.o. ex-Nasmak) and DansWerkplaats Amsterdam, a dance group led by choreographer Wim Kannekens. The project under the name of It’s All Too Beautiful consists of performances in which music and modern dance confront each other and is presented thoughout 1994 and 1995.

After another album release Terrie and Andy team up for a series of improvised guitar-concerts. Shortly after this, an even more intense collaboration follows with heavy-weights from the Dutch improv-scene such as Han Bennink, Ab Baars and Wolter Wierbos. This results in the instrumental improvisation double-CD Instant. An extended version of The Ex tours through Europe under the moniker The Ex & Guests. Later that year, three of The Ex’ members join Katie Duck‘s dance company Magpie for a series of improvised dance performances. Also, a collaborative live session with Dutch rock ‘n’ roll icon extraordinaire Herman Brood was recorded. Check out a clip of those recordings here below.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In 1990 The Ex release a split live-cassette with the Dog Faced Hermans called Treat. When Dog Faced Hermans take a year off their guitarist Andy Moor joins The Ex. More releases follow that year, including the first ever Ex release on cd.

In January 1991 The Ex and New York cellist Tom Cora go into the studio to record 12 songs. At the same time the group start their singles project “6″: every two months subscribers receive a 7″ single with extras, such as posters and pamphlets. Every issue has a special theme, and the music goes from rock and folk to jazz and rap, either on their own or together with Kurdish saz-player Brader, Dutch improvisers or the Belgian comedians Kamagurka and Herr Seele. During the summer The Ex tour for four weeks through Canada with NoMeansNo, in November they tour Britain and Ireland with Dog Faced Hermans. On top of this The Ex and Tom Cora release the album Scrabbling At The Lock in which The Ex add a new musical dimension to their expanding oeuvre. On this album the urge to experiment and the search for sounds that don’t fall under the specific rock music category come to full growth. Scrabbling At The Lock is the best selling record in their history so far. Listen to the classic track State Of Shock taken from the Scrabbling album here below.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In October they tour the US East coast for the first time, and the three week tour is filmed by Jan-Karel Lameer and broadcast on Dutch television later that year. Back in Holland they perform the Joggers & Smoggers album live on stage with guests, as The Ex Colossus Big Band at the Dissonanten festival in Rotterdam.

Listen to the superb track Gentlemen with guest musician Thurston Moore taken from Joggers & Smoggers here below or download the track at The Ex’ site here.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

More releases follow after the 1936 single and 1987 sees the band touring all over Europe in an original fire engine. Later that year they form a band called Antidote together with British punkers Chumbawamba and record the 7″ Destroy Fascism!. Also an Antidote bootleg 7″ appears carrying the title One Does Not Sell The Earth Upon Which The People Walk with recordings made in the rehearsal space.

Up until then every album or single was released on The Ex’ own label, which changed names with every new release. In 1988 they officially name the label Ex Records and stick with it. The same year The Ex cause a stir in the Netherlands by releasing Rara Rap, an anti-apartheid single released for the benefit of RaRa, which was a Dutch extreme left wing activist group fighting for retrieval of western companies from South Africa. Later that year they record two songs for Intifada, a compilation-album about the Palestinian uprising.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In collaboration with the anarchist quarterly Gramschap (Anger), The Ex release a split 7″ with the Iraqi Kurdish group Awara in 1984, their first encounter with non-western musicians. Non-western music will prove to be of great importance for The Ex in their later developments. In the same year they do a benefit tour with Morzelpronk and Zowiso for the striking British miners and release a benefit live album of the tour called Support the Miners’ Strike. More politically engaged tours and releases follow in the years after.

In 1985 they go on a benefit tour with BGK and the Wandas for the anti-militarist Onkruit organization. A year later they release the double single 1936 dedicated to the Spanish revolution. The release is accompanied by a 144 page photo book and partly consists of arrangements and adaptations of Spanish folksongs.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

In June 1980 The Ex make their recording debut: the 7″ EP All Corpses Smell The Same. Two more releases follow that same month: a 7″ flexi-disc for the anarchist punk magazine Raket from Rotterdam, and a contribution to Utregpunx, a 7″ vinyl compilation. In October they release their first LP Disturbing Domestic Peace.

In August 1981, The Ex squats the Villa Zuid in Wormer together with members of punk bands Svätsox and De Groeten. To save the villa from being demolished, they spread a free flexi-disc with a brochure around the village to explain why the monumental Villa Zuid, a.k.a. the White Villa, must stay. Members of The Ex keep living in the squat for years to come.

From 1981 on The Ex starts touring abroad and releases more LP’s and singles. Their 1984 album Blueprints for a Blackout marks a musical turning point for the band. Much of it is produced while improvising in the studio and contains experiments with more complex song structures. The combinations of unlikely instruments such as violin, oil drums, accordion, oboe and marimba give a new twist to the Ex-sound. Check out the video of Jack Frost is Innocent taken from the Blueprints for a Blackout album here below.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

The Ex has been a highly influential band in punk, experimental and avant-garde scenes for over three decades now. In 1979 the band formed out of the squat scene of Amsterdam and Wormer and has since then developed into a prominent musical force covering such diverse styles as punk, noise, rock, jazz, improvisation, and ethnic music.

Starting out as a pure anarcho-punk band, Terrie (guitar), G.W. Sok (vocals), Geurt (drums), and René (bass) choose their instruments by drawing straws to decide on who plays what. For the first half year the group concentrates mainly on a hit-and-run graffiti publicity campaign (the name being chosen based on the fact that it could be sprayed on a wall in two seconds flat!). They play their first gig on August 31 at De Bakkerij, Castricum. From then on the band begins to play regularly, mainly in Dutch squats and youth clubs. Check out this classic footage of their second gig ever in Wormerveer, September 22, 1979.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

The Ex will perform and curate an evening at Incubate 2010 on Monday September 13th.

Improv-guitar player Derek Bailey was one of the greatest musicians from the European free jazz scene, creating an unique language and method. He made a great documentary on the history of improvisation for Channel 4. And beware: it’s not only about jazz! Now you can see it at Ubuweb. If you like this, you should also buy or steal the book.