Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex—a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall— have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration.
Disturbing Domestic Peace, The Ex's debut album, appeared mere months after their first single, 1980's All Corpses Smell The Same. Originally released on the band's own Verrecords (they made up different label names with each record), the LP falls squarely within a punk idiom and, at the same time, shows this influential Dutch group's restless energy. Terrie Ex's guitar serves up vectors of percussive pulse, fraying the edges of the music's squared-off rhythms. Vocalist G.W. Sok Ð an anarchist Dziga Vertov with a mic Ð observes, declaims and condemns across a set of interrelated political concerns that would return in Ex-music for years to come.
While The Ex channel the poise and principled attack of Crass or Flux Of Pink Indians, they create a unique declamatory sound all their own Ð trailing brilliant flashes of color in the wake of punk's monochrome palette. Offering ten songs in only twenty-two minutes, Disturbing Domestic Peace lays bare a vivid snapshot of a truly singular band who (at the time) were just finding their feet.
This first-time vinyl reissue comes with bonus 7-inch, inserts and 20-page booklet.