It made sense that in the summer of 1999, the 10th anniversary show of the current line-up of The Ex took place in Amsterdam and included Shellac as well as a host of great experimental Dutch bands and performers. Shellac's Steve Albini [Tape Op #87] has been a loyal fan of The Ex for years. Why? Because The Ex have developed their sound so meticulously over the years, through rigorous touring and recording and maintaining their steadfast politic, that it is hard to liken The Ex to any other band ever.

The Ex solder political poetry to searing guitars, driving bass and mesmerizing, tribal drums. Since 1979, they have changed members and adapted their sound over and over again, but somehow the band has steered a rock-solid-punk political course supporting freethinking and social critique. They have always toured with and supported dissident underground, punk, and avant-garde musicians, as well as with politically outspoken bands and artists over the years, to name a few: Dog Faced Hermans, God is my Co Pilot, Tom Cora, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Ab Baars, most recently with Chicago post-rockers Tortoise. The Ex have toured in Europe and in the US regularly, and have released countless numbers of recordings. The Ex's popularity in the USA led to an offer from independent label Touch & Go in Chicago, to record with Steve Albini for 1998 releaseStarters Alternators. The Ex's live shows — visceral sonic attacks of part-improv-part-scored music, to the ecstatic energy proportions of Zorn's Painkillers — lead one to wonder, how on earth does such a band approach recording?

I had the chance recently to sit down for an interview with Andy Moor, one of The Ex's two guitarists. Originally from the UK, Andy was the guitarist in Dog Faced Hermans and joined The Ex in the early '90s. He became a full-time member in '95 (when Dog Faced Hermans unfortunately split up). Andy's highly-creative style of playing guitar uniquely combines avant-garde techniques with punk rock. By adding pieces of metal to contort his old Fender guitar (a la Fred Frith), and by using unusual tunings and volume control, Andy avoids using affects pedals or other devices to achieve wide ranges of incredible guitar sounds (a la Steve Albini). On a typical sunny/rainy February day in Amsterdam, I biked over to meet with Andy. We spoke for two hours, surrounded by tea pots, a wilily rigged archaic 4-track, an old stereo, piles of cassettes and CDs and Andy's two guitars.

How do you guys create The Ex's sound and music and how is your music is recorded?

The energy thing of how we make the songs, what happens live and what happens in the practice room are really two quite different things. I mean, we don't jump up and down a lot in the practice room at all. We talk quite a lot, we play things over, we try to create a frame or a structure that later on will allow us to jump up and down. We don't try to make it too imprisoning so that when we play you can't breathe. We leave the possibility that once we start playing it's going to get looser and people are going to be able to breathe and play. The first gigs are a bit weird or stiff and slowly you find the right way to play it. Very quickly after one gig you know, "Oh this bit works or this bit doesn't work." You can't really tell this in the practice room, because you're sitting down and you can hear everything so everything sounds allright. When you get to a gig, you hardly ever hear... we can't hear each other, there are sounds from the audience, I can't hear Terrie, or... it's a completely different state you are in. You adjust the music that's been created in the practice room to the gig conditions, which are completely different. The sound is different. So the music changes. That's nice that we really react to the sound. When I go to the States, I have to use a different amp, and it's completely different, I mean there bits that sound the same, but then there are whole sections that I have to adjust to, because the whole reason I had decided to play those parts was because of a sound that was coming out of the amp, and suddenly that sound is not there — it's not there from Terrie, it's not there from Luc, and you get a bit disorientated and it takes a few gigs to get adjusted and you never ever feel it's as good. I think we're going to try to bring our own stuff over, because every time we tour in the States we suffer from that.

How does that translate into recording your music? Is recording more like playing live or playing in the practice space?

It's another third space that I am usually unsatisfied with, because it is neither live nor like the practice room. What happens is we play the songs for quite a while live before we go into the studio — the only time that The Ex ever recorded straight after being in the studio was Dead Fish and they recorded that live directly onto DAT. John Langford just set the mics up, they spent a whole day and then he recorded it directly. But I didn't think that was the best sounding Ex record, partly because the songs hadn't been played in a bit and you could hear that, they got much better later, those songs. The sound was a bit over- reverbed — the live room they did it in in this great studio in England [KGM Studios, in Wakefield]. It has a great live room but it's a bit reverby and when you record the whole band live in it, you can hear... I don't know if you've heard that record, but I think that's the result of a band going straight from the practice room to the studio rather than taking their music out on tour first. Because then all these really fine playing things, you don't even realize you are doing it, the more you play together the more the sound moves — and you do it by talking about it by thinking about it and you don't even realize you are doing it it just happens, and it's to do with wanting it to work. It's nice because usually when you try out something live most times everyone agrees on what works and what doesn't, most times everyone feels it immediately. We also get a reaction from the audience, which we take quite seriously. Even if we like something, if we've played it three or four times and we notice that people are a bit confused by it, they don't react, well I don't think there is something wrong with the audience there is something wrong with how we are putting the idea across. Which is very different I think from a lot of the stuff in the improv jazz scene. I think they don't take so much from the relation with the audience. It's a bit of this thing, "it doesn't matter what the audience thinks, it's all about the music if the audience likes it well good but if they don't..." I don't think that's true. I think that when you play before an audience they are intelligent and they can feel when something works and when it doesn't work, and that's a really important aspect. That's why playing live is so good, it's like having ten practices in terms of how the song will suddenly improve and sometimes it's brutal it doesn't make it and you've worked on a song for weeks and weeks and you take it on tour and somehow you've lost it, you've done all that work... If it doesn't work it doesn't work and it's better not to play it. But it's difficult because you have old songs that are in really good shape and you have new songs that you are trying out which are always going to be a bit more fragile and you have to be careful that you don't throw them away too quickly because the old songs sound good and the people in the audience know them... That's what we are busy with the whole time, balancing these two things and trying to keep the set alive so it doesn't feel like we're playing the same songs...

Working with Steve Albini, were there specific things you wanted to achieve by working together, and what kind of gear did you use to achieve these things?

Well, actually microphones are everything, they are his specialty He seems to have hundreds of different kinds of microphones. He doesn't use much gear at all — he has a simple analog mixing desk with a little bit of EQ on it, and he hardly EQ'd anything. Whenever he thought something didn't sound good, he'd change the microphone rather than trying to put it through a compressor. He spent a lot of time in the beginning positioning microphones really with incredible detail. A couple of times I bumped a microphone and it moved like 5 cm and he could hear it upstairs and he came down and looked like that (furrows brows) and moved it and that sound coming out was like "thhhrhrrrrr" (a really noisy part of the song!). It sounded like in the whole room it wouldn't have mattered where you put the mic, but he really could hear that something was changed. When I saw that, I was like, "Wow."

This is a guy who knows his mics.

Yeah! And his ears must be really really finely tuned to that. I guess if you have that level working in that way then you don't need to use all the other stuff. All of the other stuff is a bit compensating for if you can't get it on tape sounding good in the beginning, and that's what he managed to do. I can't really give you much information about gear though, I didn't even know what the name of his mixing desk is, you should ask him. He really likes it, he said it was analog — I didn't even know you had digital mixing boards nowadays.

Yeah, they've got all kinds of crazy stuff, big stuffy computer screens where you just sit there and basically can just go "whaa!" at it and it makes a song!

Yeah? Well, there you go! He's not really into that though.

I bet not!

But he has all these mics, I don't even know what kinds he used with us, but he's got Russian mics and old '50s mics and Chinese mics — really an incredible collection.

How many would you say he has, roughly?

Four or five hundred. He basically spent the whole first day working with the mics and then we went ahead and played our songs the way we play them. When we went to listen they really sounded more like The Ex than most times I've been recorded. It sounded like The Ex in the practice room, a beautifully recorded version of what we sound like in the practice room. Really clear — you could hear everybody, and the way the sounds kind of mix is the way he managed to get it, there was no instrument that sounded unfamiliar to us... He's like a kind of field recorder, he tries to capture our sound he doesn't try to produce it the way he wants it. He does the levels afterwards, that's a different thing. But to do the actual sound of the instruments, he tries to really get the sound that we are, that we have, and he's not trying to push us into some "style" or something. I think that's great and for us that was quite a pleasure. It meant that when we recorded it already sounded good, so that when we mixed it was already there, we just had to do a bit of levels, and it went really quickly, we didn't get sick of listening to the music. It wasn't spending hours gating reverbs and all this stuff.

How many days did the recording take?

We did it in 7 days I think, so we recorded three or something. Mixing was only two days, and it was very kind of relaxed, we'd stop and play a game of snooker, or was it billiards? and have a little bit to eat and come back. It was very relaxed. I think also from experience, knowing that your ears get tired quickly and it's better to stop for twenty minutes and watch a video or have a chat rather than struggling. I think it went well, it was really fast and painless.

What would you say that you learned most, that you took away from the experience of working with Albini — it seems that The Ex working with Albini was a really really good match of circumstances. 

Certainly. We knew he really, really liked The Ex, When we asked him, he said he'd known The Ex since nearly their first single, and he knew that at some point he'd work with them. So when we asked him he was immediately into it. He had all the old records as well, which was really quite nice, because he's a big fan. When you are playing and when you are recording that feels good, you feel like you're in really good hands working with someone who really likes your music and isn't just doing it... Sometimes I've recorded with people who I think just don't like the roughness of our sound and they try to clean it up.

That's frustrating, isn't it?

And you try to explain to them that that's not what you want, but we're not great at explaining those things, we're not a super-articulate bunch of people in that field at all. We know with our ears when it isn't good, but it's very difficult to explain that because you are in the process. and usually engineers make out that they know much, much more, that it would sound better if you did this this or that, and after a while you... you kind of give up a bit and you let them deal with it. I think he [Albini] liked that roughness and tried to open it out and make space in this kind of noise and encourage it, and that is great. It wasn't like he was thinking "the guitars are too noisy or scratchy." He made them noisy and the thing that's strong about The Ex live, he managed to capture that... there are dynamics, and sometimes they are loud, I thought it was good for that, and it wasn't to do with equipment, I mean of course he has great mics but that wasn't the thing that impressed me the most when we went into the studio, it was the way he worked with these things...

And the next recording plans?

We'll be recording again with Steve in February. It's going to be quite an operation — we've got to get all the way out to Chicago and the flights alone cost as much as the recording. But the last one went so well and it's so good to get out of Amsterdam when you're recording, there's no distractions, you're in an environment where you can totally focus on the music.

"Maybe some people think that The Ex play a lot of 'noise', but The Ex have a touch that is not like other bands. There is a lot of sound but somehow there is something pleasant there. You could listen to them for 3 hours and never get that buzzing in your ears!" — Zlaya

Where do ya go in Holland if you're a great punk, rock, or noise-rock band and you're looking to record? Well, surely there are many studios in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and even maybe in Utrecht where you could find yourself a densely-equipped new studio for your high-tech needs. Or, if you really seek to become part of the real fabric of Dutch punk/rock history, you'd seek the firm farm walls of the most recent standing version of Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf... that is, if you can find it! Best translated as "Cow-Rent Company" studio, this one-level farmhouse out in the flat- flowing-farmland of Purmerend is not so far from Amsterdam in miles, but certainly exists in its very own place in time and space. Over the years, there have been several incarnations of Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf's in different locations. Thus, the studio is geared up with equipment compiled over the years, from squat studios, donations, and purchases by fans and friends. Far from high-tech, far from digitally hotwired, far from the slickster modern age of computer processing and burn-by-joystick accessorization, Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf is a no-nonsense center where like-minded musicians make a gang of great noise!

The segue here is of course the band The Ex. At the various Koeienverhuurbedrijf's, The Ex made many a recording themselves and with friends, most recently with Chicago's Tortoise. In the earliest of the studios, The Ex recorded Disturbing Domestic Peace '80, History of What's Happening '82, Dignity of Labor '83, Tumult '83, Blueprints for a Blackout '84, and in the next two Koeienverhuurbedrijf's they recorded Pokkeherrie '85, Too Many Cowboys '87, Joggers & Smoggers and Scrabbling at the Lock in '91. The Ex's other albums were recorded elsewhere, such as Aural Guerilla in the UK and And The Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders which was recorded in Amsterdam. Those who have recorded and produced The Ex include Dolf Planteyt [most albums], Jon Langford, Steve Albini, and Zlaya and Colin, who recorded the Fishtank project with Tortoise.

Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf is basically run by three individuals, one of whom is full-time producer/engineer Zlaya. I went out with Zlaya on a hazy cold and windy day in March 2000. Zlaya himself is originally from Sarajevo, and is one of many talented music-ex-pats from the region who have formed their own whole sub-scene within the rock, avant-garde, and punk music circles in Holland in the last years:

How long have you been recording here and how long has this studio been here?

The studio has been here now about 6 years, that's when I started working here. It took 7-8 months of lots of work to build, back in 1994.

Where did the gear come from?

Mostly from the studio's previous locations, and the squats. This is the first location that intends to be semi-professional/semi-commercial. All the previous locations had a lot more to do with the squat scenes — more about having a place to record and not really bothering to make them 'perfect'. Whereas this one is sort of in half-way. I personally still do things on the basis of, "Okay, I like the stuff, I want to record it", but I still have to make my living from it. It really matters, of course, what kind of music you want to be involved with. That is basically the kind of attitude that people remember this studio by. We record the stuff if we like the stuff — that's basically the attitude we have. The gear is pretty sufficient.

What are some of the main recording equipment here?

The main piece is a Soundcraft mixing console, and just a few small bits and pieces. 2" 24-track we got 2 years ago. And the Rane desk we also got two years ago.

What is that one used for now?

Right now it's an old Telefunken mastering machine, a 2-track analog mastering machine. It hasn't been used in the last 2-3 years. I always tell myself that I'm going to give it a try again, clean it up and get it working again, but... well... It looks great, doesn't it?

It sure does!

This studio is not really vintage because as you know vintage costs. It's very much analog orientated, I mean there's a computer in the corner but it's hardly ever used. The best part of the studio is the live room, because it's stone walls and a good heavy sound. It's a good recording studio, not a great mixing studio if you're after automation and a fancy clean-sounding place. But for recording the likes of The Ex it's a very good place.

What are some of the projects that have been recorded here?

The Ex recently did their Fishtank recording for De Konkurrent here with Tortoise, and there were other Fishtank recordings here like with Guv'ner, June of 44, Zion Train, No Means No, Ne Zhdali — I don't know if you know them, they're an Estonian band?

Actually, yes, I'm a huge fan of Leonid Soybelman...

Mostly bands from Europe and Eastern Europe, Russia, from Belgium like Perverted or Tryptik, Croatia called Gone Bald who live here now — the most known names would be those on the Konkurrent series, Tortoise, The Ex. That recording sold 20,000 copies in two weeks!

What was your involvement with that recording? Did you handle all of the production, or how did that work?

Well, the Fishtank series recordings are meant to be really 'free' orientated, the band is given kind of all the freedom to do whatever they like, which they wouldn't do under a regular release. It's basically a lot of fun, those sessions I enjoy the most because every band walks in having absolutely no idea whatsoever they are going to do! Their limit in time is 2-3 days, mind you those are long days like 3 hours of sleep max, and the bands just start making music. My job really starts with just engineering, helping the band set up and doing the technical side of the work. With some, like with June of 44, I even played a little bit of tone generator on it, I am part of the creative process of making the recordings. Usually, bands come here right after a tour, so they are a bit knackered and tired and all, so it's kind of a very peculiar environment for making music. So far we've had really good results because the idea is good. Basically, I do engineering, mixing, and then mastering, but that doesn't happen here.

The Fishtank project is really cool.

Yes, it's a really strong connection between The Ex and the Konkurrent bands. The idea of the place here really is like you should feel at home here. I always feel much better recording in a place that is not so clinical, where you are not afraid to touch something. So that was the idea here, to have a place that is comfortable where you can feel at home. I like having a kitchen here, for example.

What kinds of mics do you usually use in general?

A whole collection of different things, depending on what you want to do. We've got about 40 to 50 mics, we use a different one for each instrument depending on what you want to get. It's probably the most important part of the session is where you place the mic. Condenser mics, dynamic, just a few ribbon mics unfortunately.

What are your favorite mics?

It really depends, I mean my favorite mic is the Shure 57! It only costs about 100 guilders, but if I had to pick one that I could take anywhere and you've got these mics you could spend 4000 guilders on, but they won't necessarily do the best job on each sound source. 57s are my favorite. I always go for it when I am micing the snare drum, a combination of an expensive and a cheap mic combination to try to make something nice out of it. The placement of the mic is more important than anything else here.

Were there any special uses of mics or equipment that really added an extra something to, say, the Fishtank recording with The Ex and Tortoise? I mean, it would be hard to remember exactly but...

No, I do I do actually. Those sessions I always remember. For this one, there were 12 men in the room! I mean, we had three drum kits, 3 bass amps, 3 or 4 guitar amps, xylophone, tons of stuff and — you've seen the room, it's not a very big room.

Basically you want to get a live feeling of the room, so it's not just about micing every instrument separately. It's also about the total complete sound of the room. So that was the key thing.

Difficult with three kits and...

It was really tough, the room was always full, saturated with sound. Luckily those guys are good, and they knew what they were doing and they're not just banging things at the same time, they made good arrangements. It went really funny — the first half of the day nobody did anything, everyone was waiting for the other to start! They didn't have anything prepared of course, and they only met here. It wasn't like a bunch of people who knew each other well from before. They all started in the afternoon, like, "Okay, we'll just lay down a few tracks and then we can pop in and do some stuff on top of it." And that's how it went. So, Colin and I together didn't really have the time to bother too much with anything technical — our job was to keep an eye on who was doing what at what moment, to get everything mic'd. You just don't have the time and conditions to do neat precise work, that comes with such improvising, you hope it all comes out good!

And how about mixing?

Mixing took, well again, not very long, 2 days, Tortoise had to leave for home. Mixing was tougher cuz we had piles of stuff on tape. You don't have time to select things and play them again, you just take everything that was there. Mixing became more of a selective listening to bits and pieces. There were tons of instruments on tape, it was really very interesting. Those recordings could have come out hundreds of different ways, you could have picked different bits and pieces and put them together. It was about mixing. That was an interesting session. June of 44 was very peculiar as well — we slept a total of 4 hours in 3 days I think. They came straight from being on tour, and they were tired. One of the guitar players was really sick as well, and they had to leave straight to Chicago after the session. Everything was made up right here, all the songs — just sort of jamming in the room and putting them together. Very interesting, but very intense.

On your feet work.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Anything else about the studio?

Well, it's pretty boring to talk about technical things but if you're asking I love the Rane desk. It's brilliant, the EQ, mic preamps, everything on it — it's a thing that you can't abuse basically. You can crank up the gain and still sounds musical, you can create distortion on it that still sounds musical, EQ is musical even though it's really kind of set at 15 dB +. It's very open sounding, I mean it's an old thing comparable to a Neve. The 2 " machine is great as well — I usually drive it really hot, I use lots of tape saturation and tape compression and that's what people know me for. I don't bother with rules so much, as long as it sounds right, I don't care. That could be sort of the common thing about this studio — that you are allowed to do anything. I mean I've been to places where they are like, "Hey man, the meters are hitting pretty hard" and I'm like, "Yeah, I wanted it that way!" Not everything of course, but things I want to sound that way just put them onto tape and then it works... it's really a matter of attitude. The room is really important here — the most important thing is if the recording sounds good in the room, if it sounds good there it sounds good here.

It's one thing to be an incredible, time-testable, almost-beyond-critique band and it's quite more to have fans that include the likes of famed producer/guitarist/socio-cultural-critic Steve Albini. When The Ex were offered to record with Chicago label Touch & Go, their choice for a producer could not have been better. Starters Alternators was recorded at Albini's Electrical Audio studios in Chicago, and here's what he had to say to my probing questions about working with The Ex... and a lesson for us in the kick-ass use of kick-ass mics! Thanks Steve!

Andy Moor has raved to me about working with you. How would you describe your impressions of recording with The Ex?

I am nearly a 20-year fan of the band, so it was a fantastic experience for me. I love their playful approach to music and life, and they are all exceptional musicians. It was an absolute joy.

Was it challenging to work with The Ex, as their live sound incorporates (sonic?) (kinetic?) improv? or, was this not the case at all?

The nature of the expression doesn't have to change the technical aspect of recording, so the spontaneity didn't require any special consideration. If I had developed a "standard" method, I may have been on unfamiliar ground, but I have generally tried to be prepared for anything, so it was no obstacle.

What were the specific mics and gear that you chose for working with The Ex to best record their sound?

The only really tricky thing about recording the Ex was capturing all the action on Kat's drum kit, since she uses so many pieces in a non-standard style, and anything could be hit at any time. It required using quite a few microphones. When there are two mics per drum, I normally combine them to a single track per drum. The exception is a bass drum, where the balance of the two is better determined during mixdown. Kat was using Gretsch drums (one of the kits we have here at the studio) with additional percussion pieces and a tiny little toy tom tom she uses for accents. Over the drum kit I used a pair of Schoeps 221b mics (small diaphragm tube mics with an extended low-end) as a spaced omni pair, and a Beyer 160 (used to fill-in the stereo image between the 221s.) I think (though I'm cloudy on this) that I used an Earthworks TC40k in the vicinity of her percussion blocks and bells. It may have been an Audio Technica 4051. Normally, I use two mics on each tom, top and bottom. I used Josephson C609 mics with side firing capsules on most of Kat's drums. I used AKG 451s on the tiny little tom tom, and on her floor tom I used two 414s. On the bass drum I used a Crown GLM 100 dangling near the beater and an AKG D112 on the front head. On the snare drum I used an Altec 175 (a small tube mic with an excellent sound in this application). The room ambience was recorded with a pair of Altec 150 ("coke bottle") mics, with 21d capsules. With this setup, I could be assured that whatever Kat did, it would be recorded. Luc's bass guitar was recorded through a Traynor TS50B bass amp and 15" EV speakers. The mics were a Beyer M380 and an Audio Technica 4033. I don't remember which mics were used on Terry and Andy's guitars. I seem to remember using an STC 4038 and an AKG C28 (with CK4 capsule), but there must have been others as well. Jos's vocals were recorded with several mics, according to whether the vocal was meant to be dry and direct or booming and ambient. His stentorian delivery has an almost percussive quality at times, and the choice of mic and room (dry or ambient) has a great effect. Unfortunately, I don't remember the precise choices we made. I know there were an EV RE20, a Neumann U67 and CMV563 in play, as well as an interesting mic made by Capps: The mic has no official name. It is a prototype commissioned by Capitol records to be a low-noise omnidirectional mic for general-purpose recording. Electronically it is very much like a C12, but it is an end-firing, metallic diaphragm with an interesting, peaky sound. I don't know if it would make a suitable "general purpose" mic, but it occasionally sounds great.