Enormous Door | ||||
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Studio album by The Ex & Brass Unbound | ||||
Released | 2013 | |||
Recorded | 4-5 June 2012 | |||
Genre | Punk rock, Experimental | |||
Length | 44:16 | |||
Label | Ex Records | |||
Producer | Riccardo Parravicini, Mats Gustafsson, Andreas Werliin, Arnold de Boer, Johan Berthling | |||
The Ex & Brass Unbound chronology | ||||
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Enormous Door is an album by Dutch post-punk band The Ex and Brass Unbound, a quartet of horn players hailing from four different countries. The album was released in 2013 on The Ex's own label, comprising reworked versions of previously released songs and alongside entirely new material.
Emerging as an anarchist punk rock quartet in 1979, The Ex began to frequently work with jazz musicians within their first decade. [1] Their 1989 album Joggers and Smoggers , 1995's Instant , and the singles series the band released in 1991 and 1992 featured extensive collaborations with members of the Dutch free jazz ensemble Instant Composers Pool (ICO), [2] and 2001's Een Rondje Holland presented a larger horn section as part of the band's Ex Orkest. As the band developed their repertoire into the 21st century, they turned their attention to Ethiojazz and were backing Addis Ababa saxophonist Getachew Mekurya on world tours and for his 2006 album Moa Anbessa with French, Dutch, and Canadian musicians Xavier Charles, Joost Buis, and Brodie West on clarinet, trombone and alto saxophone. The Ex's 2010 album Catch My Shoe featured trumpet work by Italian Roy Paci, and when The Ex returned to record a final album with Mekurya in 2012, they were joined by Chicago reed player Ken Vandermark, as well as Buis, Charles, West, and ICP trombonist Wolter Wierbos.
Amidst these collaborations with The Ex, a new international collective of horn players gradually formed and by 2010 adopted the name "Brass Unbound" after Johan van der Keuken's 1993 film of the same name. [3] In his film, Van der Keuken follows the development of the European brass band tradition in the former Dutch colonies to include traditional marching bands to more hybridized forms of brass music that combine European instruments with Ghanaian rhythms. [4] Independent of concerts with Getatchew Mekurya, Brass Unbound began touring as a live act with The Ex in 2010. For these concerts, the ensemble wrote and improvised new material, as well as reworkings of songs from The Ex's catalog. [5]
Released in 2013, Enormous Door catalogues The Ex's material with Brass Unbound. The songs "Bicycle Illusion" from their first album with vocalist Arnold de Boer and "Our Leaky Homes" from a 2011 single rearrange their songs to make space for horn parts. [5] A popular love song by Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed that had long been in The Ex's live set with Getatchew Mekurya is sung by drummer Katherina Bornefeld. [1] And The Ex's tribute to Congolese street band Konono Nº1, which first appeared on the Ex's 2004 album as "Theme from Konono", resurfaces as "Theme from Konono Nº2" on Enormous Door. [5]
Previously unreleased songs comprise the remainder of the album, leading with the North African-inspired "Last Famous Words", with others exploring themes from punk culture, free jazz, and leftist politics. [6]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
All About Jazz | [7] |
Ox-Fanzine | [8] |
Pitchfork | 8.1/10 [5] |
Tom Hull | A− [9] |
The Quietus placed Enormous Door on its list of the top albums of 2013. [10] Pitchfork's Douglass Wolk called Enormous Door "an acrobatic, ferocious record, a welcome burst of electric noise and squealing horns from a group whose power and flexibility keep growing with time." [5]
Shellac is an American noise rock band from Chicago, Illinois, composed of Steve Albini, Bob Weston and Todd Trainer and formed in 1992.
Ken Vandermark is an American composer, saxophonist, and clarinetist.
The Ex is an underground band from the Netherlands, started in 1979 at the height of the original punk explosion as a Dutch punk band. The Ex originated from the squatting movement in Amsterdam and Wormer, and was inspired by bands like The Fall and The Mekons. Although initially known as an anarcho-punk band associated with the Dutch post-punk ultra scene, over the decades The Ex's sound has gradually developed into its current form of highly intricate, experimental punk/post-punk/no wave-inspired work. This sound includes a combination of diverse genres and styles, such as noise, folk, world music, free jazz, and crossovers between these genres. Other examples of branching out stylistically include the improvised double album Instant and a release under the moniker Ex Orkest, a 20 piece big band assembled for performances at Holland Festival. "One reason we are hard to describe is that we never had an education at music school, and in that sense we are not influenced by any traditional playing," explained Katherina Bornefeld, drummer for The Ex since 1984. The Ex's lyrics consist of straightforward statements about politics and abuses in society. The band enjoys international acclaim for this socially critical message, as well as for the energetic, rhythmic, atonal guitar playing, and for the furious vocals of singer G.W. Sok, who was replaced in recent years by Arnold de Boer of the duo Zea. The Ex have released over 20 full-length albums.
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Moa Anbessa is an album by Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekuria with Dutch post-punk band The Ex and guests, released in 2006 on The Ex's subsidiary label Terp.
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Rosario (Roy) Paci is an Italian trumpeter, singer, composer and arranger.
Y'Anbessaw Tezeta is the second studio album by Ethiopian tenor saxophone player Getatchew Mekuria in collaboration with Dutch punk rock band The Ex and several other musicians. The title is Amharic for "The Memory of the Lion" and Mekurya intended the record to mark the closure of his 65-year career.
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The Ex are a Dutch music group from Amsterdam founded in 1979. In their four decades as a band, they have moved from playing anarcho punk to post punk, jazz, folk and African music. They have collaborated on records with fellow indie musicians Chumbawamba, Dog Faced Hermans, Tortoise and Sonic Youth, improvisers like Tom Cora and the Instant Composers Pool, and toured with African musicians Konono Nº1 and Getatchew Mekurya.
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