The most enduring institution born from the echoes of the revolution, both true and engineered, in the year of grace 1977, alongside The Mekons, the Dutch The Ex have, since their formation in '79, been fulfilling the promises that were born and died in the fervor of punk, offering it the prefixes anarcho, post, art in a journey as uncompromising in its way of doing things as it is continuously open to exploration. Aligned with a fiercely independent political activism, without concessions to agitprop fundamentalism, they reflect in their music a voracity and sense of discovery that transcends the militant trenches of the narrowest 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 lineup consolidated in 2009, with Katherina Bornefeld, Andy Moor and Arnold de Boer in a precise gear of 3 guitars, drums and voice. In the early days, still with G. W. Sok on vocals, a role held until 2009, deeply immersed in the ambivalent spirit between action and despair of the time, born from the communal experience of squats and spaces of subversive dissemination via graffiti on walls and monochrome zines, they gathered the wreckage and animic strength that remained of punk into a minimal and urgent music, marked by the pulsing bass, martial rhythms, guitar crackles and lyrical barbs between assertive spoken word and disgust. From there, they went on to map other languages, embracing post-industrial debris (Dignity of Labour, 1983), the overwhelming hypnosis of noise (Pokkeherrie, 1985), or exchanges with improvisation and jazz in the expansive Joggers & Smoggers of 1989, where we find the presences of Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, lots of percussion and winds. In league with those communal and open principles, they have shown a particular appetite for collaborations, having recorded at the beginning of the 90s two highly recommended albums with cellist Tom Cora, developed a fruitful relationship with ICP, the unexpected symbiosis with Tortoise and, in a pressing fascination with the culture of Northeast Africa, Moa Anbessa and Y'Anbessaw Tezeta with the late Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, in a career marked by lineup changes that never, but never, compromised their founding principles and vision. Respect, right? BS.