The Ex

Ex-45 Festival

Combinations/line-up coming soon.

New Flyers

New 7″ single - Great! / The Evidence

The Ex's new 7″ single - “Great! / The Evidence” will be released by Ex Records (cat. no. EX148) on 20 September.

The Ex

Terrie Hessels - guitar, Katherina Bornefeld - drums, Arnold de Boer - guitar + vocals, Andy Moor - guitar.

Few bands are as focused on potential challenges, on what is yet to come, as The Ex, which is pretty remarkable for a band celebrating 45 years of existence, a turbulent journey filled with an impressive series of highlights. However, nostalgia has never been this band’s forte, as they like no other succeed in reinventing themselves, finding new alliances and fascinating challenges along the way. Stay out of that comfort zone for long enough and it just might disappear. 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.

So, in 45 years they did more than 2000 concerts in 45 countries. 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”. Urgent, willful, adventurous, open hearted and joyfully obstinate. As such, The Ex remains true to that one, indestructible adage: “Forward in all directions!”.

Recorded by Jan Schenk @ Schenk Studio, Amsterdam July 3 2024.
Live photo: Maarten Mooijman.
Cover+design: Emma Fischer.
Mixed and mastered by The Ex.

Available from Exmailorder and Bandcamp.

The release of this 7″ is planned for mid September, together with a six day tour all over The Netherlands.
September
19 - Eindhoven, Effenaar
20 - Utrecht, dBs
21 - Landgraaf, Oefenbunker
25 - Amsterdam, Paradiso
26 - Groningen, VERA
27 - Tilburg, Murf/Murw festival

AND…

A very special EX-45 Festival will take place at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam on November 23 and in the Nona, Mechelen (B) on November 24. Keep your eyes open for the amazing line-up!

Concerts July and September

The Ex in the Balkans

Back On Track!

The Ex is back on track! And 2024 is going to be something! We’ll celebrate our 45(!) years of “forward in all directions” and very soon we will play our 2000th concert! (2000 in 45 different countries!)

Back in 2019 we had an intense year. Full on playing our 27 Passports set. Festivals and tours in France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy and more. Remarkable gigs on La Reunion Island, the Victoriaville Festival in Canada, a jazz festival in Sarajevo, Bosnia and some “The Ex 40 years” festivities in France with the Ethiopians Fendika and Circus Debre Berhan. Just to mention a few amazing, super-inspiring, moments! But at the end of that year it also felt good to have a little break and practice again. Starting from scratch. Just to see where we are. Full of inspiration and ready for something new! We made 26 albums in total, but working on a new one is still the ultimate challenge. A thing we always were aware of in our long musical adventure!

But then, suddenly, in March 2020, corona erupted. All over the world. Chaos. Playing, touring, seemed not a good idea.. Our planned rehearsal break became much longer, but we weren’t panicking. Plenty of things to do! And the prospect of coming back with a brand-new set was exciting. We re-released the first 8 The Ex LP’s. Completely with all original artwork and inserts. We all four did some smaller impro gigs, recordings and cooperations. AND, the great Belgian writer Guy Peters is working on a book about The Ex. We realized it was a good time to go through our massive archive. Dozens and dozens of boxes! And some more things we didn’t have time for during our intense years and years of playing full-on music!

We did an improvised The Ex set at the Catalytic Sound Festival in the Villa in Wormer, on December 1, 2022 and it was super inspiring! And about half a year ago we felt it was really time to start coming together and make music again, working on brand new material. The following practice sessions exploded and soon we had around 10 song ideas. Ready to develop and fine-tune. Early December we did two try-outs at the Catalytic Festivals in Merleyn, Nijmegen and Paradiso, Amsterdam and we concluded we could start playing and touring again! From March 2024 the agenda filled up soon. Still a big, exciting musical adventure, but here we are: ready to jump on stage; ready to rock, roll and much more!!

Katherina, Arnold, Andy, Terrie.