ah the sheer bloody giddy glee, the joyous joy of this tonight.

three guitars. one drummer. one sampler. two voices. two saxomaphones. one trumpet. one trombone. one cowbell. and christ knows what else.

kinda hard to describe how far removed from whatever anarcho-somethingorother seventies crass-esque cliches you might have in yr head, sounds you might have in yr ears, upon basic description of the ex. had conversation at bar with youngling who seemed to be expecting some socialist worker vendor bellowing marxist slogans into his face whilst hammering three chords out over projections of rivers in war zones, filled with bloated dead baby corpses, shell / apple / enron logos superimposed over their fly-masked faces.

hard to pin down the evolution of the ex over the past five(?!?) decades. it’s been an ever swelling swollen melange of punk (past and post), diy aesthetics, noise, jazz, improv, world, folk. rhythmic from top to toe, from drums to strings, from voice to samples. a propulsive compulsive metre with the urgency and cadence of heartbeat hammering against ribcage. a type one theta pulse, inducing amped-up psyched-up bouncing undulations of synchronised minds and flailing bodies. everything always seems to be buildingbuildingbuilding into some giant hypno-stomp that makes you want to (and wants to make you) dance and holler and wave yr fucking arms around like some pasty glaswegian windmill. had to squeeze a lazy netherlends reference in somewhere.

which only describes half of the muscle on display tonight. as it’s part of a tour with four genuine honest to god tooting geniuses. mats gustafsson, ken vandermark, roy paci and wolkter wierbos. giving it big band brass (balls), giving it free skronks and melodic workouts in all manner of skewed sad sweet ecstatic beautiful ugly ways. used to seeing gustafsson, the chunk of jazz wrestler, wielding that hernia inducing sax of his like some horn of the gods, but it’s a delight to watch paci playing air guitar on trumpet or wierbos jigging around with gay abandon when not huffing himself to death on trombone.

tonight was everything right about music. a willingness to engage and be engaged with. it was fun. it was powerful. it was emotional. it was serious. it was, i guess, about the beauty of freedom and everything that entails.

the ex / myspace

brief(ish) mentions to the rather ace support tonight as well.

tattie toes who i previously described thusly: play a kindof semi-made-up basque balkan jazz folk strammash. with a bit of velvet underground violin screech and ceilidh stomp and shanty wooze. a rhythmic fucking delight. big ballsy gutsy singing from small lady. and a clattering kinetic rattle that reminds me occasionally of sunburned hand of the man.

t’was the first time hearing them and i guess i’ll kindof stand by it. the longer set made what i already consider one of my new favourite glasgow things a toaty bit better. seemed to have more of a chance to stretch their legs this time round and i’m picking up a touch of the whole concrète ethno folk thang being put about by part wild horses et al.  hell there’s even a point where they’re banging shit out on various two by fours. chuck in that big gurning chop-change post-punk bass chundering and you got yrself a deliciously rum mix.

oh and that mental concrete mixer rumbling noise that appeared with dropped drum mike, you should totally use that.

and not forgetting zun zun egui. somehow mixing krauty santana with afrobeat zappa and ye olde psyched-up smashing pumpkins (maybe making that one up…) and the sublime frequencies back catalogue into one gloriously display of stringed and skinned and keyed virtuosity.  watching the dudes fingers was getting me all boggle-eyed. anyway they’ve got a record out – bal la poussiere – that i will almost certainly stump up cash for when i have some.

right ran out of time, this things an ugly formatting mess and zze deserve more words than i’ve alloted but hey ho. second gig of the year and i’m struggling to see how anything else can possible match this. cheers folks.