The Ex @ Islington Mill, 23 August
As soon as the current incarnation of Dutch anarcho-punks The Ex take to the stage with their repetitive, earthy, Captain Beefheart-esque avant-boogie, the rhythms seem to head straight to the hips of a number of the assembled “punks of a certain age.”
Taking the appearance of a group of art teachers on their summer break, The Ex tonight channel the fundamentals of their musical identity, combining layers of scratchy, Minutemen-style guitars with Katherina Bornefeld’s unusually melodic approach to drumming, and relative new starter Arnold de Boer’s minimal and impressionistic vocals.
Bornefeld steps out from behind the drum kit to provide ancient-sounding melodies as step-in lead singer on From The Top Of My Lungs, adding more to the shamanic tone. The greatest audience response, however, comes when the layers of guitars are stripped back, each motif given space to breathe, as on the sinuous That’s Not a Virus, where de Boer’s abstract word collages are allowed to become all the more vivid as he bellows out, “The first woman to watch TV, she died!”
A more mournful and foreboding tone is struck on Soon All The Cities Will Have The Same Exodus, de Boer fearfully describing a dystopian future of homogenous urban planning. But before such a horrendous prophecy is fulfilled, The Ex offer the satisfyingly hulking and churning riffs in a finale of Maybe I Was The Pilot, along with the hope that we can at least enjoy a few more sweaty Sunday nights like this one. [Edward Bottomley]