First off: long life to The Ex! It's easy to fall in love with these dutch punks, they embody everything I've always wanted to be and I've never been: anarchists, smart, open minded, radical, classy and above all coherent. Lately I've had the luck to see them live together with Mohammed Jimmy Mohammed (r.i.p.) at the Zu fest and they still kick ass with they post punk virulence!. They've always been into experimenting with different ethnical music forms sometimes it worked while sometimes it was just an experiment, but like it or not in a world where sometimes anti globalization itself fight globalization in a standardized and pre-packaged way, well they're the last of many demonstration: "another world is possible"...but they've always been demonstrating it, therefore the next question is: "when Bregovich of ethnic music becomes fashionable is it for a real interest or just cause it’s the last in an endless list of trends?", anyhow that's not the case, therefore forgive my old fart divagation. The mix of The Ex-element with Getatchew Mekuria and Guest is out of the ordinary, sure, but not so far from what you can expect, at last we're talking of a band with a strong contradistinctive language, but the "unconventional factor" is the african aftertaste of this saxophonist that sometimes probably is also the responsible of some song structures and it means that's not a mere collaboration in which he's playing arranging those flying dutchs without having his say. Sometimes I think the music is damn catchy like in "Aynotche terabu shemonmwanaye" sometimes it's good but probably less functional, but maybe that's just a problem with my ethnically-untrained poor ears. A lot of jazz, funk reminiscences everywhere, even if sometimes are barely audible but never forget when speaking about jazz we always speak of the so called "afro-american culture". Let’s repeat it all together: "Long life to The Ex and to their friends!!!".