Posts Tagged ‘The Ex’

The Ex – Great! / The Evidence

Posted: 2 October 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Ex Records – 20th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s hard to conceive that The Ex have been going for a full forty-five years. It’s more than understandable that the pandemic proved a challenge for them, a band accustomed to getting out and doing it live. As their bio points out, in 45 years they did more than 2000 concerts in 45 countries. But creativity isn’t something that can simply be switched off. Again, to turn to how their notes set it out, ‘The pandemic was a standstill for many, including The Ex. Or perhaps it was more a kind of recharging, as the band is back on national and international stages with new music, ready to return to the studio… It was time for a new 45rpm 7” single. From the brand-new set they are playing full-on this year, they picked two blinking tracks: ‘Great!’ and ‘The Evidence’.

For some reason, I’ve always considered The Ex to be more of an album band, but as the compilation Singles. Period evidences, they’ve released a fair few singles through the years. And what’s interesting is how they clearly approach singles and albums very differently, exploring expansively on albums in the same kind of way they do live and striving to see just how far out they can push things, while exercising remarkable discipline and concision with the single releases, with tracks of two or three minutes and rarely exceeding four in running time. This awareness or tailoring of material to medium is quite a rare thing, but illustrates their phenomenal versatility as musicians, and also provides some insight into their methodology and creative processes.

‘Great!’ is. It’s an uptempo meandering sliver of discord whereby the musicians play across one another rather than together to spin a slice of angular post-punk that’s not a million miles from The Fall in their early years. ‘The Evidence’ – which clocks in at under three minutes – is more focused-sounding, and more noisy. Both songs are the work of a band who are still firing on all cylinders with ideas and energy.

This single is exhilarating in unexpected ways. It sounds fresh – and yes, it might also sound like it’s from circa 1979, but it sounds authentically 1979, rather than some old buggers trying to recreate and rekindle the vibe of their youth. Just what their secret is, I don’t know – although one suspects the fact that they’ve continually striven to create, and to create something new, something different, is a significant factor. In life, as well as with musicians, it’s so easy to simply settle, to adopt a routine, to take the easiest path within an established comfort zone. Fair enough: most people want an easy life, especially when they reach a certain point. But, critically, to accept a diminishing scope for activity is to consign oneself to a future of diminishment in every way. This clearly isn’t the mindset of The Ex, and this single provides ‘The Evidence’ that they’re still ‘Great!’.

And after that shameful punchline, I should probably get my coat – but shall instead pour another drink and get to the next review – because diminishment is stagnation and death, and re-engaging with The Ex post-pandemic is an invigorating experience.

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Yannis Kyriakides – Hypnokaséta

Posted: 28 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Unsounds – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

When it comes to being a music writer, for me, at least, perhaps even more of a buzz than getting advance listens of the most eagerly-anticipated releases is being exposed to music I otherwise wouldn’t have. And the nature of the avant-garde means that you have to be in the know to know. Being introduced to the Unsounds label and the work of Yannis Kyriakides certainly opened my eyes – and more so my ears – to a whole expanse of music I assumed must exist, but would have had no obvious means of locating or accessing while going about my ordinary life before.

Although I’ve only dipped in and out of Yannis Kyriakides’ output, more as one with a casual interest than a fan per se, his work has never ceased to impress with its range and constant questing for something different, something new, both sonically and methodologically and “Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is no exception.

Kyriakides’ introductory notes explain both the concept and the practice behind the recording of the album: “Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is a continuous set of 16 pieces for string quartet, improviser (playing cassettes and any instrument) and live electronics. The source material is based on dreams that I had during the first few months of lockdown, April-June 2020. Accounts of these dreams are encoded in the music that is played by the quartet and also encrypted in the sound textures that surround this.

“The pieces alternate between quartet as the foreground and electronic interludes, where solos or duos underpin the soundscape. The title of the piece (Greek for ‘sleep-cassette’) refers to a theory of dreams proposed by Daniel Dennett, that says that dreams are loaded into consciousness like a cassette tape during the night and played just before waking.”

It’s longtime collaborator Andy Moor who provides the guitar and tape work on these recordings, and together with Kyriakides’ electronics, which move between shuddering skitters and unsettling scratchiness and quite abstract sounds, when juxtaposed with the strings – which span playful to mournful to droning discord.

The sixteen pieces have been mastered as six separate tracks, but they flow as one immense composition in a continuous state of transition. Within each of the six numbered tracks, the individual segued pieces bear titles, with their time markers also noted. The titles present, if not strictly a narrative, then a guide to the theme, the idea, the inspiration.

‘Hypnokaséta I’ comprises ‘The government’s new cultural scheme’, ‘All roads to the airport are blocked’, and ‘Everyone is nervous, everyone is lost’, titles which serve to encapsulate the events and the sensations they engendered within the populace at the strangeness and uncertainty of lockdown.

‘Hypnokaséta III’ is a stunning work of contrasts, containing as it does the gentle, almost light-spirited string-led ‘The reluctant hotel manager’ and the dramatic, jarring ‘She lifts the mountain’, a dark, alien drone brimming with electronic tension that crackles and tweets. The rapid switches in mood and form recall the sudden and wild extremes I experienced myself during this time: it was impossible to keep up with the constant stream of developments in the news, while at the same time entrapped within the confines of the house, where the world outside felt so very far away, while also having to accommodate the changeable and diverse headspaces of friends, family, and colleagues. No-one knew what the fuck was going on, or how to cope.

There was an air of unreality about it all, and at times it became difficult to distinguish between the bewildering nightmarish reality of the wakeful hours and bewildering nightmarish sleep, and in drawing on dreams in the creation of Hypnokaséta (2020-2021), Kyriakides captures the essence of that abstract space forged in the mind where everything blurs. This blurring and abstraction is also reflected in the titles: ‘The concert promoter complains that not much happens in the piece’ sounds like something that could happen in one of those self-reflective semi-anxiety dreams, and ‘Bridges are being dismantled

across the city’ has an apocalyptic sense of separation, while ‘Body swap opera’, ‘Swimming pool synthesis’, and ‘Mutations on an empty grid’ are altogether more surreal in their connotations.

Throughout the album, the lister is jolted from a moment of tranquil reverie by some abrasive thud or rasp, an unexpected spike in volume, and a turn towards an altogether more disquieting atmosphere.

The composition is nuanced, the placing of the switches and transitions perfectly timed to achieve optimal impact, never allowing the listener to truly settle, to relax, to sit back and enjoy, and the moments of tension are indeed tense; but credit must also go to the performers: the strings are played with a keen awareness of the importance of both dynamics and detail, and Moor, in his capacity of ‘improviser’ brings texture and tone delivered with an infallible intuition. The album’s structures may be subtle, almost invisible, but they’re affecting, and as a whole, Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is an experience which permeates the psyche in unexpected ways.

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Andy Moor – Music For Safe Piece

Posted: 17 June 2021 in Albums
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CD Unsounds 68U – 15th June 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

No-one plays guitar quite like Andy Moor. Renowned for his work with purveyors of expansive and exploratory avant-jazz The Ex, Moor’s solo work takes that guitar work from a collectivist, band setting, where it’s a part of a conglomeration of instruments, and places it directly under the spotlight.

As the liner notes explain, Safe Piece is an exploration of the question of parenting while maintaining an artistic practice. Choreographer Valentina Campora, who initiated the project, began testing the possibility of dancing onstage with her baby as an experiment. The project became a series of 8 performances where Campora performed with the baby for a small public. Andy Moor, father of the child and Campora’s partner, accompanied and gave a sonic context to this experiment. Each performance was filmed by visual artist Isabelle Vigier for the video Safe Piece (a film).

Tye tracks sequencing is segmented in a way that perhaps make more sense in context of the filmed pieces. There are three themed chapters, if you will, pieced together in chunks – but identifying any specific thematic unity that connects them is difficult. Moor moves between single-string pings and frenetic fretwork. But for the most part, this is sparse and lugubrious downturned fret buzzing notes slumping down like a machine winding down as the batteries run down or clockwork unwinds to a crawl. There’s some growling, gut-churning low-end that provides substantial contrast with the nagging of the picked top notes. There’s fret-buzz and warped, slashing chord chanking, stuttering stop/start shudders and jarring , jolting unmusic, that’s uncomfortable at times – not just a bit awkward, but fully squirm-inducing, setting the nerve-endings of the teeth on edge.

Across the album’s thirteen pieces, Moor’s minimal style that centres around scratching and scraping and all other kinds of angular guitar abrasions are front and centre. Discord and atonality are his signatures – but at the same time, he conjures myriad moments of fractured musicality. Hums and thrums and crunches crash through picked chord sequences and segments that sound like tuning up and down in frantic search of the note and not quite finding it.

Safety is paramount, but Music For Safe Piece brings a cognitive dissonance that’s difficult to process in places. But we know that comfort is overrated, and that art should proffer challenges, and Music For Safe Piece brings plenty.

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Yannis Kyriakides & Andy Moor – Pavilion

Posted: 15 June 2020 in Albums
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Unsounds 65U – 15th June 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

While Andy Moor’s distinctive guitar playing is central to this collaborative work, it’s worth stating from the outset that this is a challenging listen. Spacious and eerie, above all it’s atonal and discordant, as if the two musicians are playing against one another, rather than with, and, moreover, against themselves, particularly in Moor’s case as he digs deep to pick notes in counter-time and counter-melody.

How this album came to be is worth recounting, so I shall quote directly: ‘In 2017 Andy Moor and Yannis Kyriakides were invited to participate in Xavier Veilhan’s ‘Studio Venezia’ at the French pavilion for the 57th Venice Art Biennale. This was a space where a series of musicians were in residence throughout the six month duration of the festival, recording and performing there in an open environment. The two musicians had access to a variety of instruments and machines including Moog, Buchla and Vermona synths which were used for some of the recordings. The unusual situation here was that they were working in a studio, experimenting, trying out ideas while at the same time being a part of an ongoing art installation. So they were part of the space, yet not really knowing whether they should play for the crowds who were constantly passing through the pavilion or just ignore them.’

‘The result was nine hours of recorded material mostly improvised or based on a few basic rhythmic patterns that Kyriakides had prepared as starting blocks. For this album they selected 45 minutes of what they considered to be the strongest material after several listenings and editing sessions.’

That’s a lot of material, and a lot of whittling and editing, but the end result is well-assembled and flows together nicely – while at the same time mining a seam of arrhythmia and clanging dissonance. Moreover, each piece is distinct and distinctive, with different textures, tones, and moods, and as such, Pavilion represents a disorientating, difficult journey.

The layers on ‘Camera’ build at different rates, crossing over one another and interfering with one another’s time signatures so as to become bent out of shape, colliding against one another in a clutter of discoordination. The synth bass on ‘Dedalo’ warps and scratches and scrapes away as low grooves that trip and curl, wow and flutter. There’s a playful side to it, with the rhythmic swing and metallic clattering that sounds like pots and pans, which contrasts with the more ponderous atmospherics of ‘Concha’, a nine-and-a-half minute exercise in detuning and retuning, as notes bend and bow with a slow, resonant decay.

‘Diluvio’ is unpleasantly tense and prickly, and the album ultimately drifts towards an uneasy conclusion with the last couple of pieces, which are simultaneously dolorous and soporific, albeit in a dark, horror-movie dreamscape sort of a way.

Pavilion leaves you feeling… not quite bewildered, but spaced, separated, as if standing half a step behind your own body or your own shadow. It’s less about if this is a good thing in itself, as much as the fact that this is a work which has a degree of psychological resonance, which marks it as a creative success.

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Yannis Kyriakides Andy Moor – Pavilion

Anne-James Chaton & Andy Moor – Tout ce que je sais

Posted: 29 May 2018 in Albums
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Unsounds – 60U – 1st June 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

Tout ce que je sais is the second part of Chaton and Moor’s ‘Heretics’ series, which, according to the blurb, sees the duo ‘revive the most obscure, violent, erotic passions, summoning the great gures of their personal mythologies. In the company of Caravaggio, Marquis de Sade, William Burroughs and gures such as Jose Mujica, the duo immerses the listener in another world history peopled by radical thinkers’. ‘Heretics’ pays homage to those heroes who have used transgression and excess as a necessary means for creation. In this new album, recorded live at the Carreau du Temple in Paris on the occasion of Périphérie du 35e Marché de la Poésie (2017), Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor deliver a radical work at the confines of literary and musical creation.’ The first release came in a giant matchbox, complete with textured side and a huge matchstick. No, I haven’t burned my copy. Yet.

The fact it is a live recording creates a certain degree of difficulty in terms of how to weigh its realisation. Granted, there’s an immediacy to the stuttering, fractured ruptures of dissonance what scratch through at forty-five degree angles to the rhythms and overall shapes of the compositions. But to doesn’t feel like a definitive document: something is missing.

‘Casino rabelaisien’ is a stark, minimalist grind, throbbing and churning away at a short, repetitious sonic loop of bass and extraneous discord reminiscent of Suicide and with cluttering, scratchy guitars that call to mind The Fall pre-1980. The murky sound accentuates the claustrophobic atmosphere, and Moor’s monotone delivery. The words being spoken in French mean I’m excluded from their meaning and from their sense. Oftentimes, the language of sound is enough to transcend linguistic barriers. But with the musical aspect so minimal and the vocal aspect so much to the fore on this work, I fear that much of the significance – and quite simply much of the content – is lost. Burroughs et al – this is my field, so to speak. But I simply don’t recognise it, let alone connect on a level where I can engage critically in terms of its conceptual content. Nothing about Tout ce que je sais conveys the brutal perversion of de Sade on a sonic level, for example, and there’s nothing that brings the bewildering explosion of ideas or the narrative fragmentation of Burroughs’ writing here.

‘Conquins coquettes at cocus’ jolts and jars, the crunching guitars choppy over a haltering, stuttering rhythm worthy of Shellac. It’s sparse in instrumentation, but it’s intense, and Moor’s dry, almost inflection-free delivery provides a counterpoint and contrast.

There’s something deep and haunting in the very notes of ‘Clair Obscur’, but the limited instrumentation means it feels somehow incomplete, unfinished. And then here’s the applause and the shouting from the audience immediately after; while being there would have almost doubtless have been a quite remarkable experience, the material would equally doubtless benefit from a proper studio realisation in order to capture the nuance and the detail of the compositions and their arrangements.

‘The Things That Belong to William’ closes the set; a slowed-down, opium-slurred Burroughs drawl creaks through the jolting, jarring spasmic guitar chords. It’s interesting and uncomfortable, but doesn’t go any real distance to create the same kind of temporal dislocation of Naked Lunch or any of Burroughs’ cut-up works. Is this a failing? Probably not in real terms. We land, then, at a place where we’re faced with the disunion between expectation and actuality.

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Anne-James Chaton & Andy Moor – Tout ce que je sais

The Ex – 27 Passports

Posted: 7 April 2018 in Albums
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Ex Records – 23rd March 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

‘We always start from zero when we make a new album,’ the band explain of their creative process. This could well be the essential factor in their enduring nature: in avoiding the trap of becoming predictable to either their audience or themselves, they’ve remained fresh and innovative, continually testing their creative limits. Almost forty years and twenty-odd albums since their formation as an anarcho-punk band, The Ex are noteworthy for their eternal evolution and their refusal to stands still or to retread old ground. Collaborations, side-projects, and shifting lineups have also proven integral to this ethos, and it’s been almost eight years since their last album together as a quartet.

27 Passports sees them return once again reinvigorated, refreshed and ready to reinvent rock once more. And they do, in the way only a band with three guitars (but no bass – Moore’s baritone guitar provides essential tonal range here) and infinite vision likely can.

As the title suggests, this is an album of movement. Or, moreover, perhaps an album that creates the illusion of movement. 27 Passports is accompanied by a 40-page booklet of photos shot by Andy Moor. They’re odd, devoid of context or narrative meaning. Simultaneously eye-catching and mundane, they’re snapshots of life, devoid of perspective or implication: a row of feet on a train; a rusting car; a swan with its head under water; a traffic jam. These images provide an appropriate visual accompaniment to the disjointed, semi-abstract and immensely oblique lyrics and the musical content.

The first track, the six-and-a-half-minute ‘Soon All Cities’ is driven by a loping rhythm and crashing cymbals and builds a hypnotic groove slashed through with angular guitars which clang and scrape and layer up with volume and distortion. More than the choppy guitar work that often strays into the atonal and discordant, as do the vocals, it’s the percussion that really provides the focus of 27 Passports, pinning the loose and purposely obtuse guitar work in place and holding everything together.

If the claim that ‘there are some remnants of their African adventures’ (a reference to their collaborations with Getachew Mekuria) sits at odds with the spiky post-punk schematic, ‘The Sitting Chins’ subtly and strangely weaves ‘world’ music elements into the jolting barrage of chaos. If there was ever an antithesis of Paul Simon or Sting, this is it, and this fact alone makes 27 Passports an essential album.

For the most part, the compositions eschew linearity in favour of locking into a space and pushing away at a single motif for as long as seems reasonable, and sometimes beyond. This is very much a selling point. At to B is overrated: it’s about the journey. And it’s less about the distance than the motion itself. Take a walk: multiple laps of the block will not only achieve the same exercise effect as walking for miles toward a destination, but new details will reveal themselves with each circuit. No two circuits of the same short route will ever be the same. 27 Passports may be transcontinental in intent, but looking the wrong way down the binoculars is what it’s really about.

Barrelling bass scours the lower sonic realms on the robotic, motorik, ‘New Blank Document’; equal parts Gary Numan and early Swans, with heavy hints of The Fall’s ‘Spector vs Rector’ in its messy fabric. Such discord scratches away at the psyche, drills into the cerebellum, and unsettles the equilibrium.

In contrast, ‘Footfall’ deploys the same methodology and the same instrumentation, but against the relentlessly thumping beat, there’s a nagging aspect to the cyclical riff which has an intuitive emotional drag, a certain resonance. There’s something special about a certain descending three-chord sequence… and of course, they almost bury it beneath layers of jagged trebly noise. And that only renders it all the more beautiful and captivating.

There are some wonky pop moments present, too, with the Pavementy ‘The Heart Conductor’ bouncing along nicely, with a catchy vocal melody riding on top of the off-kilter guitars that are reminiscent of early Fall. Of course, when it comes to The Ex, comparisons are vaguely pointless beyond providing guidance for the uninitiated: with such an expansive career, it’s their work which has influenced many of the acts that stand as useful reference points. Of the surviving bands of the period – The Fall being no more and having arguably plateaued a good few years ago and Pere Ubu only offering occasional sparks – it seems like The Ex are the last ones standing who continue to really extend their reach and to challenge themselves and their listeners. 27 Passports is an absolute stormer, and an album which stands up against anything else going – period.

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The Ex - 27 Passports