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6pm - 9pm
Ex-Easter Island Head are a UK-based experimental musical collective composing and performing music for solid body electric guitar, percussion and other instruments. The group plays multiple electric guitars augmented through mechanical preparations and extended techniques, creating hypnotic performances rich in repetition, shimmering drones and melodic invention through purposefully limited means.
Their records and live performances have received significant critical acclaim from the likes of The Wire, Pitchfork, the Quietus and the New York Times. Favourably compared to the likes of Steve Reich, Glenn Branca and John Cage, the groups’ music has been praised for its mixture of percussive drive, emotional warmth and playful experimentation.
They have performed in venues ranging from the tiny Scottish island of Iona to a 150-year-old brewery in Berlin, with major festival appearances including ATP, Supersonic and Le Guess Who? Collaborators have included the BBC Philharmonic, composer Arnold Dreyblatt and musicians Laura Cannell, Charles Hayward and Andre Bosman in the group Whistling Arrow.
Their library music releases Mechanical Landscapes 1 & 2 released by EMI/KPM have seen the group’s work used internationally for television and radio productions, whilst the groups’ own Large Electric Ensemble projects have seen the core quartet joining forces with forward-thinking musicians to make ambitious large scale performances across the UK and EU.
The group’s latest album Norther (2024) is available through Rocket Recordings.
Praise for ‘Norther’:
The Quietus – “From astute use of simple ideas multiplied comes music with acute beauty” – #1 in tQ “Top 100 albums of the year so far” July 2024
Uncut Magazine – 8/10 – “Deeply elemental, textural and tactile, blowing with all the force and quiet grace of the wind”
Narc Magazine – 5/5 – “Ex-Easter Island Head have made their masterpiece”
Loud and Quiet magazine – 8/10 – “lab-honed instrumental pieces that follow an almost mathematical logic…tweaks made to an equation that produces cosmic results”
Moonbuilding – Album of the Week – “The music of Ex-Easter Island Head feels so warm, so resonant and so accomplished…It’s going to be great see and hear what’s next from this brilliantly inventive quartet.”
Terrascope – “Daring, playfully irreverent in their approach to instrumentation and startling innovative, while still managing to retain ‘the fun’, Liverpool’s Fab Four (what, you mean there was another one?) might just have scaled a career peak”
