The longest-standing institution to emerge from the echoes of the revolution, both genuine and orchestrated, in the year of grace 1977, alongside The Mekons, the Dutch band The Ex have, since their formation in ’79, been fulfilling the promises that were born and died in the fervour of punk, endowing it with the prefixes ‘anarcho’, ‘post’ and ‘art’ in a journey as uncompromising in its approach as it is continually open to exploration. Aligned with a fiercely independent political activism, without yielding to agitprop fundamentalism, their music reflects a voracity and sense of discovery that transcends the militant trenches of the most narrow-minded punk and perceives the world as a sphere of influence. With Terrie Ex as a founding member still present to this day, they return to the Aquário with the same line-up established in 2009, featuring Katherina Bornefeld, Andy Moor and Arnold de Boer in a finely-tuned ensemble of three guitars, drums and vocals.
In their early days, whilst G. W. Sok was still on vocals – a role he held until 2009 – deeply immersed in the ambivalent spirit of the era, caught between action and despair, born out of the communal experience of squats and a space for dissident expression via graffiti on walls and monochrome zines, they channelled the wreckage and remaining spiritual strength of punk into minimalist, urgent music, marked by driving basslines, martial rhythms, snaring guitar riffs and lyrical barbs that oscillated between protest-driven spoken word and revulsion. From there, they began to explore other forms of expression, embracing post-industrial debris – Dignity of Labour, 1983 –, the overwhelming hypnotic power of noise – Pokkeherrie, 1985 – or exchanges with improvisation and jazz on the expansive Joggers & Smoggers from 1989, featuring Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, plenty of percussion and wind instruments. In keeping with these communal and open-minded principles, they have shown a particular appetite for collaborations, having recorded two highly recommended albums with cellist Tom Cora in the early 1990s, developed a fruitful relationship with ICP, an unexpected symbiosis with Tortoise and, driven by a compelling fascination with North-East African culture, Moa Anbessa and Y’Anbessaw Tezeta with the late Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, on a journey marked by changes in line-up that never, ever compromised their founding principles and vision. Respect, right?
BS

‘Y’ — a symbol of the human spirit on the rise — is the emblem of a promise. A deep-seated desire.
Y/COMPOUND is the embodiment of a free and unpredictable musical structure, rooted in Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Each musician, in dialogue with Ravenna Escaleira’s tenor saxophone, develops an encounter from their own musical language – not a performance, but a collaborative creation. The line-up is open, variable and unpredictable, with the number of voices varying from performance to performance. The group never repeats itself, and each encounter is unique, based on a single fixed premise: from bone to spirit.