Ex Eye To Bring Their Fluid and Maximalist Energies To Roadburn 2018
We never really make it easy for you, do we? Sure, we might feature a more straightforward rock band or something like that sometimes, and they’re as much part of Roadburn as anything else, but otherwise you’d think were actively looking for the weirdest, most difficult bands for the human brain to assimilate, right? Yeah, well, we kind of are. And some of them are, if you pardon the apparent paradox, a real no-brainer.
Like when word got out that master saxophonist Colin Stetson had put a new metal band together called Ex Eye, for instance. Excitement was high just with that small snippet of info alone, and after a few listens – the first of many! – to their self-titled debut, it was obvious that Roadburn needed these guys on one of its stages twisting and turning your synapses into a little pile of grey mush.
Thing is, Ex Eye aren’t that complicated to get your head around, not really. Sure, they’re as non-linear as any band that mixes jazz and metal will ever be, you’ll risk permanent injuries if you try to follow their unpredictable lines of melody with any kind of headbang of body movement (an experience you’ve surely learned the hard way from people like Dead Neanderthals or Aluk Todolo at Roadburn, right?), but the relentlessness of the band’s assault, the enormity of its scope and the unbound energy they exhale will actually make them a very much immediate thing.
It’s music that might skip your brain altogether and activate your nervous extremities all by itself, but it’ll hit you straight away. Just seeing a legendary figure like Colin on stage playing metal would be satisfying enough, that he’s recruited people like Liturgy‘s Greg Fox on drums, bassist Shahzad Ismaily (who’s played with the mighty Secret Chiefs 3) and guitarist/composer Toby Summerfield to complete this stellar line-up is just icing on the cake. About three or four tonnes of icing.
Colin Stetson comments: “Even before we were invited, Ex Eye had hoped to play Roadburn festival next year. It’s simply a phenomenal festival with a stellar reputation and consistently excellent lineups and we’re honored to get the opportunity to bring the fluid and maximalist energies of Ex Eye to the stage this year.”
Ex Eye will blow up numerous brains at Roadburn on Thursday, 19 April at the 013 venue.
José Carlos Santos / September 2017
