The Ex – 27 Passports

The Ex 27 Passports vinyl is one of those records that reminds you exactly why an independent label with complete creative control can produce work that no major imprint would ever greenlight. Released on the band’s own Ex Records under catalog number EX 147, this LP arrives from a group that has spent over four decades refusing to stand still, and that restlessness is baked into every groove.

The Ex: Amsterdam’s Most Relentless Band

The Ex formed in Amsterdam in 1979, arriving initially in the slipstream of the anarcho-punk movement. What separates them from nearly every other band that emerged in that period is what they did next. Rather than repeating a formula, they spent the following decades pulling at threads: free jazz, avant-garde noise, Ethiopian music, Scandinavian folk, post-punk abstraction. The result is a discography of more than 20 full-length albums that documents a band genuinely curious about the world. Collaborations with figures across wildly different musical traditions have become a defining part of how they work. They are not a punk band that dabbled. They are a working ensemble that built an entire practice around not knowing where the next record would land.

What Makes The Ex 27 Passports Vinyl Worth Your Attention

This is a record that sits within a body of work defined by friction and movement. The title alone, 27 Passports, signals the kind of global restlessness that has shaped The Ex’s sound for decades. Released on Ex Records, the band’s own imprint, this pressing carries the catalog number EX 147, placing it deep in a self-managed catalog that the band has controlled from the beginning. That independence matters. No outside pressure to smooth edges, no label interference, no commercial compromise. What ends up on the record is exactly what The Ex wanted on the record.

The Format and Why It Matters Here

As a standard LP pressing on Ex Records, this copy gives you the record in the format the label intended. Ex Records has always been a small operation run with care, and pressings do not hang around indefinitely. The band’s back catalog circulates in collector circles with real enthusiasm, particularly among people who sit at the intersection of punk, free improvisation, and world music. If you already own Ex records, you know the label’s aesthetic: direct, unfussy, committed. If this is your entry point into their catalog, 27 Passports is a serious place to begin. The band’s reach and ambition are fully present here, and owning it on vinyl, the format that suits music this physical and immediate, is the right way to hear it.