SWEDISH AZZ will be becak soon with more swedish azz jazz in a village close to you…..”

Formed in 1979, The Ex has developed over the years into a melting-pot of diverse musical styles: noise, rock, jazz, improvisation, and ethnic musics have been interweaved under one unique umbrella: “Ex-music”. Discordant, highly rhythmic guitars, the rolling, almost African drumming style, and the intense delivery of the often ironic lyrics give the music of The Ex its special character.

So far, in almost 30 years, The Ex has played 1371 concerts all over Europe, North America and Africa, and released over 20 albums. Never pigeon-holed into one of pop music’s corny corners, The Ex is continuously in development, and always open for new ideas and collaborations with people of all kinds, people whose spirit inspires and appeals to the group. The main principle remains; to make music with heart and soul, out of reach of commercial trends or expectations. The consequent independent approach of the group and the manner in which they organize their concerts and release and distribute their records themselves, has set a significant example for the alternative music circuit.

It’s 2010 now, and they’re still going strong, and forward, in every possible direction.

Current lineup…

THE EX

TERRIE HESSELS – guitar, baritone guitar
ARNOLD DE BOER – vocals, guitar, sampler
ANDY MOOR – guitar, baritone guitar
KATHERINA BORNEFELD – drums, vocals

+

BRASS UNBOUND

MATS GUSTAFSSON – Baritone and slide sax

KEN VANDERMARK – clarinet, tenor and baritone sax

WOLTER WIERBOS – trombone

ROY PACI – trumpet, poetry

review after tour in UK… says it all:

John Robb , February 15th, 2010

30 years since they first formed, John Robb is thrilled to see The Ex keeping the visionary spirit alive

There is only one rule – there are no rules.

Netherlands group The Ex are the last band standing. They arrived three decades ago, a time when standard rock was abolished and new methods of communication were established.

Since then they have been a restless band incorporating a whole gamut of musical styles into an aural adventure that makes most others look lazy and pointless.

Like a clanking, mechanical Dutch rhythm machine they have somehow managed to combine strands of music as diverse as Ethiopiques, Burundi, Gnawa, dubstep, post punk, blues, free jazz and folk into their innovative whole. And that’s the cool thing about The Ex, no matter how far they wander from their base they still manage to make the whole caboodle of sound as direct, focussed and punk rock as when they started.

The band have their roots in the vibrant late 70s anarchist squat culture of Amsterdam. They grew out of the ideas thrown into the air by Crass – that direct political anger fused with inventive avant garde take on punk’s template – and took them in their own idiosyncratic direction.

They shared Crass’ intelligence and collective spirit and the idea that punk rock could be so much more than an excuse to get pissed. The UK Death To Trad Rock bands found a common ground with The Ex when they toured Holland in the early 80s. My band the Membranes bonded with them and the Ex’s squat was the port of call on endless European tours. They were the epicentre of a thriving scene then and their musical adventure was already unfurling in a fascinating direction of unapologetic records and fierce, idealistic politics.

Then and now an Ex show is like no other. There are no stars, no concessions to boorish rock n roll stupidity. This is a joyous affair, a stage crammed with equal partners. There are the twin guitars of Andy (formally of the fantastic Dog Face Hermans) and Terrie – scratching, scraping hypnotic riffing on battered Telecasters and weird half bass/half guitar combinations that build and build into the amazing song climaxes.

There’s the brass section that is culled from some of the world’s finest free jazz musicians- that cut loose with moments that are sheer Sun Ra or Coltrane or even the legendary police brass band that plays on all the Ethiopiques records from the early 70s. New singer Arnold de Boer has nobly filled the gap left by recently departed Jos with the right combination of intensity of modesty that marks the band out.

And perhaps the key part is the delightful Kat on drums – she is the best drummer in the world. Still. I’ve seen The Ex so many times in the last 30 years and she has been unfailingly brilliant. There is no dull 4/4 here, for Kat is a rhythm machine. The combination of cowbells and woodblocks with her rolling, multi rhythmic approach is amazing, no song ever gets bogged down in the obvious but instead is unfailingly danceable; yet another key to The Ex.

The Ex have managed to keep moving through the decades with this spirit. Their restless hunger for music has seen them play all over the world, including several trip to Ethiopia. This outward-looking international approach has fused their approach to making music.

An Ex show is a shared experience, they take the audience on a musical adventure to places no one has been before. They are the most interesting musical unit in the world today- several other long standing post punk bands get endless accolades for their sense of exploration but all of them bar The Ex just repeat the same tricks over and over to the same applause. Go and see the Ex and you will hear rhythms you have never heard before, you will find yourself dancing to some free jazz wildness in 13/8 time; you will find yourself grinning to a piece of white noise, you will shut your eyes and get lost in the brass skronk.

All this should not really be happening – after all that kind of music is normally in the hands of the snobs, but The Ex are playful and make the tough musical choices, the breathtaking frontier music, the direct political anger into a sweaty seething party, an uplifting, joyful celebration.

No-one else can do this.

You know what really makes me feel great this morning? This Ex tour sold out fast. After years of being a best kept cult secret they have suddenly started to become popular. Right out of the blue, after 30 years, after the gradual strangulation of creative culture by the corporations and the cynicism of the music industry they have brilliantly proved that playing music with this sense of wild-eyed fun and radical political edge and this adherence to all that was good and great about the positive politic of the punk and post punk period can actually fucking work.

Today the world is smiling.

The good people are winning.

Contact…

The Ex
P.O. Box 635
1000 AP Amsterdam
Netherlands

ex@theex.nl
mailorder@theex.nl

The Tour poster

And to see the Tour list, Click here

Mats Gustafsson – saxophones, Fender Rhodes and live electronics
Johan Berthling – bass, guitar, organ
Andreas Werliin – drums and percussion.

New ensemble with members from The Thing, Tape, Wildbirds and Peacedrums,
creating a mix of slow down – speeded up, distorted versions of contemporary experimental music.
With inspiration from mining, large lorry engines, electro acoustic music from Sweden and a large variety of creative garage rock and free jazz, FIRE! is building up a new language and models for how improvised music can be done.

“…det är som Ramones, fast utan sång!!!” Per Svensson, 2010

“… eller snarare som the Doors, fast tvärtom!” Per Svensson, 2010

Click the image to download a high rez image

First release on rune grammofon, LP and CD, in 2009:

RLP 3091 – Fire!: You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago

http://www.myspace.com/earthwindand

http://www.runegrammofon.com

Photos:
Johan Döden Dahlroth

Hypnotic and psychedelic different sounding ”jazz” (Rune press)

Out of the seemingly inexhaustible treasure chest that is the Scandinavian experimental scene comes this latest Swedish supergroup, formed of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, member of many a formation, of which the best known is perhaps The Thing, bassist Johan Berthling, co-founder of Häpna and member of Tape, Animes and Sten Sandell Trio, and Andreas Werliin, the drumming half of Wildbirds & Peacedrums amongst other things. Having landed on Rune Grammofon with their first missive, this three-headed entity, who operate under a banner which, thanks to a prominent element of punctuation, unmistakably suggests an element of urgency, have such widespread backgrounds that the sum of their collaborative effort was bound to surpass much of their individual outputs.
You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago is a pretty dense and vibrant affair, which rakes influences way beyond the confines of jazz, pulling in elements of seventies psychedelic rock and experimental Kosmische/Krautrock, amongst other things, into these four radically different tracks, two of which clock around the fifteen mark, bookended by two much shorter pieces. Propelled by a pretty fluid and volatile rhythmic section, which is as much at ease with introspective moments as it is with incendiary passages, these songs drift from the primal sax effusions of If I Took Your Hand to the hypnotic groove of the last segment of But Sometimes I Am or from the rambling and feverish cadence of the first half of that same piece to the more sophisticated layering of Can You Hold For A Minute? and the surprisingly light tribal flow of the title track.
The two centre pieces share a particular format which has the trio work a meandrous path through restrained musical forms before building up to a rhythm which eventually transforms the scope of these pieces altogether. The way they achieve this is very specific to each track though. Of the two, But Sometimes I Am is the one that goes through the most profound changes, rising from an opening sequence cast around a pretty minimal bass-drum pattern and the distant hum of processed distortion in the back, which get progressively ripped apart by blazing gusts of sax. Taking advantage of a lull in the proceedings, Mariam Wallentin, the other half of Wildbirds & Peacedrums, hangs a few vocal arabesques over a monolithic Hammond drone, but soon the pace increases radically, throwing the piece into a much more hypnotic groove where the rhythmic section, like a runaway train, crashes through distorted guitars and keyboards until it eventually burns out a few minutes down the line.
Can I Hold You For A Minute? on the other hand is a more linear construction which the trio continuously refine, bringing in elements in much more subtle fashion. There is, here too, a clear progression, but this is done through sophisticated sonic layering, which, over the first eight minutes, gives the track growing density. Over the last few minutes, it appears to be ceased by rampant decay as the sounds decompose one by one until there’s nothing left but a cluster of distortions.
On these two pieces, Gustafsson’s sax is often ubiquitous by its absence, but the direction chosen by band doesn’t necessarily justifies its presence, leaving the man free to contribute a much wider palette. As an entity, Fire! work extremely well. Fearlessly pushing into uncharted territories, combining elements which are usually kept well apart into a greatly contrasted and eclectic sonic canvas, the trio have created with this first album a particularly intense and daring soundtrack which can only captivate more with time.

www.themilkfactory.co.uk

“Fire!” is Mats Gustafsson on saxophones and Fender Rhodes, Johan Berthling on bass, electric guitar and Hammond organ, and Andreas Werliin on drums. The first piece is built around a repetitive bass vamp, a solid anchor point for the drums to go haywire and Gustafsson to have a no-holds-barred sax solo, screaming and wailing as if his life depended on it, yet ending all smooth and gently. The second piece, “But Sometimes I am”, starts with a slow acoustic bass figure around which Werliin adds percussive depth on his cymbals. After some four minutes the sax joins with some gut-wrenching multiphonic sound, full of distress and sadness, a sound which is so unmistakably identifiable as Gustafsson, so human and authentic that it’s really frightening, and – suprise – his sound merges into some high-toned singing by Mariam Wallentin, on a true psychedelic backdrop reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”, but then the electronics set in as the speed increases, moving to an inevitable paroxysm we know from the early Floyd. Absolutely mesmerizing. “Can I Hold You For A Minute”, starts with a rock-ish mid-tempo beat, with bass and drums laying a repetitive pattern for the electric guitar and keyboards to build a hypnotic wall of sound, through which Gustafsson’s piercing sax comes tearing through, as if his soul was condemned, for ever.

The last track starts light-footed, with some handclapping accompanying a repetitive sax over an odd 2/4 rhythm, of which the tempo increases, a little too joyful and too much of a contrast with the carefully built up atmosphere of the previous tracks.

This is not fusion. It is not even progressive jazz rock à la Soft Machine. It’s the endless psychedelic and epic – as yet unpolished – sound mastership of the early Pink Floyd in a more modern form with the magnificent voice of Gustafsson to add emotional power.

http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com

Fire! är en presumtiv supergrupp, om än i klart mindre skala än, säg, Cream. Vad som avgör är förväntningarna man kan ha på just den här konstellationen. Saxofonisten Mats Gustavsson känner många till; han är redan ett världsnamn inom improvisationsmusiken. Basisten Johan Berthling har hörts med bland andra Tape och Sten Sandells trio. Och så trummisen Andreas Werliin, som häromåret slog igenom med kritikerrosade Lovebirds & Peacedrums. Det blir inte nödvändigtvis bra. Många band har sett bättre ut på papperet än de låtit i verkligheten. Men Fire! håller. De spelar med kropp och själ. En övertygelse som oavkortat strömmar genom musiken. Det rock och jazz och impro i ett. Kraftfulla, långsträckta stycken som avtvingar mig en reaktion och får mig att vilja gå mot strömmen. Werliin gör mycket. Hans tunga spel över pukorna är en viktig del i Lovebirds & Peacedrums och har samma bärande effekt här. Något helt annat än Cream.
Johannes Cornell

new group of improvised noises and silences… all from Österlen…

“we listen to the wind…” ( there is not much other to listen to anyway in Österlen…)

Per Svensson, Jakob Riis and Mats Gustafsson

first concert will be  on 23rd of oct at the Copenhagen Improv Festival.

watch the TOUR site for more info.

we think they are positive…

http://www.elintruso.com/article.php?id=1688

http://www.tomajazz.com/bun/2009/09/thing-covers-top-10-continuacion.html

Barry Guy		bass, director (GB)
Agusti Fernandez		piano
Evan Parker		sax (GB)
Mats Gustafsson		sax, fluteophone (SE)
Hans Koch		sax, clarinets (CH)
Herb Robertson		trumpet (USA)
Johannes Bauer		trombone (DE)
Per Åke Holmlander		tuba (SE)
Paul Lytton		percussion (GB)
Raymond Strid		percussion (SE)

Barry Guy is one of the world’s leading bass soloists and improvisers, well known as director and founder of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, also as a composer of new music for chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras has founded a new ensemble called the Barry Guy New Orchestra.

This all-star band brings together the biggest names in the world of contemporary Jazz and Improvisation from America, England, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany.

The world premiere of the new composition Inscape-Tableaux by Barry Guy was staged in Ireland for the “Mostly Modern Festival 2000″. During four days the musicians performed a unique set of trios, duos, solos and finally the new piece.

Open rehearsals and workshops provided an insight into the process of creating a new ensemble and into the intriguing combination of free improvisation and composed structures.

Evan Parker may be the most formidable saxophonist since John Coltrane. He plays Trane’s instruments, tenor and soprano, and lists Coltrane as one of his principal influences. Parker is emphatically not an “entertainer,” but a true artist who has developed an entirely new way to play the saxophone. He has developed the possibilities of unpremeditated music more deeply than almost anyone, creating a personal vocabulary that is simultaneously instantly recognisable and adaptable to the most varied of situations …”

Robert Spencer

His discography is so extensive that it has been published in book form and lists over 150 albums recorded over a period of more than three decades (Publisher Bandecc hi&Vivaldi by Francesco Martinelli) this will soon be updated since he has recorded a vast number of new CDs in the past few years.

Mats Gustafsson was born in Umeå, a town in the north of Sweden with a rich cultural life and an inspiring jazz scene. He is now one of the most significant new faces in improvised music. Combining great sensitivity and attention to detail with boundless energy. He has developed a close collaboration with an increasing number of top rank musicians, including bassist Barry Guy, violinist Philipp Wachsmann, cellist Günter Christmann, percussionist Michael Zerang, and more recently saxophonist Peter Brötzmann.

“Mats is the most modern of players where the genre tags of jazz, noise, experimental, avant-whatever are finally transcended to a new millennium – where compositional concepts are at once in check with open improvisation and a super-postmodernism becomes what we always wanted: rock & roll!”

Thurston Moore

Hans Koch worked first as a solo clarinettist in Winterthur and performed widely as a soloist and chamber musician. In the early Eighties he became involved in Jazz being influenced by musicians like John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker. In his first trio with Martin Schütz and Marco Käppeli he began to experiment more and more with a mixture of composition and improvisation.

Since then his career as a free improviser and composer has brought him together with Cecil Taylor with whom he played in the “European Big band”, Shelley Hirsch, Butch Morris, David Moss, Andrew Cyrille and many of the leading European improvisers. With Barry Guy he has played as a Duo partner and his collaboration with the Swiss musicians Werner Lüdi, Stephan Wittwer and Fredi Studer has lead to numerous albums on the Intakt label and others.

“A brilliantly virtuosic, independent saxophonist and bass clarinettist with a beautiful, clear and convincing tone, a first class improviser, differentiated, powerful, rich in ideas and many-facetted”

Christian Rentsch

Herb Robertson is internationally renowned as an innovative instrumentalist, composer, and arranger in traditional and avant-garde jazz and new music. He has performed and recorded with Tim Berne, Mark Helias, John Zorn, George Gruntz, Bobby Previte, London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, and Bill Frisell. He has also recorded five albums under his leadership for JMT.

“Herb Robertson has a voracious appetite for the jazz past, with an eye toward the future … He forced runs of superhuman length, power and density from his horn, yet his tone was amazingly clear and crisp. He used a range of half-values, split tones and mutes to introduce a breadth of tonal colourations to his performance. ”

NY Times

Johannes Bauer is best known for his work with his brother Connie Bauer and the bands “Doppelmoppel” and “Slawterhaus”, he is one of the most dramatic and articulate trombone players in the German improvising music scene and has made a substantial contribution to free and new music since the Seventies as a soloist, composer for improvising musicians and in various ensembles. He is instantly recognisable by his amazing sound, rhetoric and the seamless blend of highly theatrical and lyrical playing.

Per Åke Holmlander is one of the leading exponents of the new generation of improvisers and new music performers in Sweden. He is known both in the new music and free improvising scene as a virtuoso on the tuba with an amazing range of colours and dynamics.

He is a member of Mats Gustafsson’s NU Ensemble and Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers Orchestra amongst others, and is also well know for his contribution to music theatre.

Paul Lytton, one of the first members of the experimental British free-improvising avant-garde in London during the Sixties and early 1970s, was a founder member of the London Musicians Coop and the Aachen Musicians Cooperative.

He has been building own instruments since 1969 (Incus 14 features Evan Parker on the lyttonophone), and had an exhibition of the equipment in Wuppertal in 1980. Since 1975 has lived in Belgium. Founded Po Torch Records in 1976 with Paul Lovens, with whom he has recorded three duo albums.

Perhaps most well known in the UK and US as a member of the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio and, prior to that, for working in duo with Evan Parker. However, there are many recorded contributions to other groupings, most notably the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and King Ubu Orchestru, also recently ECM released a duo recording with Paul Lytton and Philipp Wachsmann called Some other Season.

Raymond Strid is one of the leading figures in the Swedish improvising scene. He regularly performs with Mats Gustafsson, Marilyn Crispell, Barry Guy in their respective trio and quartet formations. He is also in demand all over Europe and America to play in various larger ensembles.

“Raymond Strid is an explorer of sounds with an extremely sensitive ear, a percussionist who creates sonic rooms. ”

Jazz Review

SPLATTER… the duo of Mats Gustafsson and Paal Nilssen-Love

Mats Gustafsson – saxophones

Paal Nilssen-Love  – drums

This duo works in a musical landscape where normal conventions are set aside. The interplay is determined by an extreme focus, where the use of very fast and dry playing, shock effect of sudden loudness or sudden silence, kicks the two into a match where they challenge each other in a most intense manner. Their first CD came out on Smalltown Supersound in 2002. STS 063

www.smalltownsupersound.com
www.olofbright.com