The Ex

In the late 1970s the Ex coalesced around a punk hybrid designed to promote their liberal socialist aims, operating as the Dutch parallel to Crass. Across the 1980s the band flooded the market with recordings and agitprop materials, each issued on a separate Dutch imprint. During the 1990s they shifted toward industrial percussion textures and improvisational approaches echoing Einstürzende Neubauten and Test Dept.

Formed in the late 1970s, the group entered the new decade with their first album, Disturbing Domestic Peace. The year 1983 proved especially crowded, yielding the LPs Tumult and Blueprints for a Blackout, the singles box Dignity of Labour, and the EP Gonna Rob the Spermbank.

Two further full-lengths surfaced in the mid-1980s before the band launched their own Ex label in 1988 with the Peel Sessions anthology Hands Up! You're Free. Between 1990 and 1993 they concentrated on side projects, among them the cassette-only Treat recorded with Dog Faced Hermans and a pair of albums cut with avant-garde cellist Tom Cora—Scrabbling at the Lock in 1991 and And the Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders in 1993.

Nineteen ninety-five brought two major statements: the double-CD improvisation collection Instant and the studio album Mudbird Shivers. Starters Alternators followed in 1998, Spanish Revolution arrived in 2000, and that same year the 20-member Ex Orkestra reached completion. The next spring saw the release of Dizzy Spells, tracked with Steve Albini.