The Ex appreciation thread
 

So, anyone here got love for these crazy Dutch anarchists? I saw them in Dublin this year, and girlfriend, they rocked my world. One of the best live bands out there at the moment, in my humble opinion.

get this:

i like em a lot, they don't play in the UK often though, i saw them 4 years ago and they were great.

nicfit - have that, it's excellent. I saw this grouping in Paris last year - awesome.

saw em 4 years back, and didn't even know they were playing, it was Erase Errata's tour for their second album with Numbers, then about a few days before the gig, i noticed on the black cat site The Ex at headliner, and was like what the fuck, how that happen

suffice to say, was quite amazed

probably one of the best bands i don't listen to nearly enough.

Love them passionately. Maybe my favorite band, ever.

One of these days I shall see them live.

Yeah, they are getting old but still kick some serious ass.
Saw them live last year....... AMAZING

They've aged better than Sonic Youth, you should add.

MUSICALLY, you should add.

This is what I meant.

Just a small bump so I can recommend the theater performance of A Clockwork Orange by d'Eleqtrique with The Ex that's currently touring Holland (plus one performance in Belgium). I missed the original showings on the old NDSM shipping wharf in 2005, but caught the theater adaption some days ago.

The stage adaption is a lot different than the original book/movie and I think it helps if you've read the book/seen the movie. It's quite an intense in-your-face theatre performance, with the music being really loud and overwhelming at times. Because of that it's sometimes difficult to comprehend the monologues of the actors and GW Sok, but it doesn't matter too much because there's a lot of things happening and the tense music alone suits the atmosphere well. The Ex are really on top form here, some of their best performance I've seen in years.

My only real critique would be that the stage characters aren't always credible. The actor playing Alex (a 15-year-old in the book!) is a 40 year old guy and he and he and his gang just don't really come across ruthless enough to make them believable as a youth gang committing violence and rape for joy. The way the violence and rape is visualised was done pretty original though, with a female dancer and about half a dozen of buckets of red paint. The final scene of the play has 3000 liter water raining down from the ceiling and looks quite spectacular. I read some newspaper reports that the tour almost got cancelled because some theatres were scared that insurance wouldn't cover any possible water damage done to their floors, so they even had to tone down the amount of water they'd originally planned on using. Don't miss it if you have the chance, it's definitely worth seeing even if you're not a fan of The Ex.

awesome just begins to describe them.