| Instant | |
| Type: | Studio album |
| Artist: | The Ex + Guests |
| Cover: | Instant (album) cover.jpg |
| Released: | October 1995 |
| Studio: | Koeienverhuurbedrijf, Purmerland, Holland |
| Genre: | |
| Length: | 69:10 |
| Label: | CrossTalk (US) Ex Records/RecRec Music (Netherlands) |
| Producer: | Dolf Planteijdt |
| Prev Title: | Mudbird Shivers |
| Prev Year: | 1995 |
| Next Title: | Starters Alternators |
| Next Year: | 1998 |
Instant is a double compact disc by the Dutch experimental post-punk band The Ex. The band recorded the album in conjunction with many guest musicians, notably members of Holland's Instant Composers Pool (ICP) for whom the album is partially named, the other part being that the Dutch term for "free improvisation" literally translates to "instant composition."
The Ex had long collaborated with ICP members and featured those recordings on the double album Joggers and Smoggers and on the box set 6. Instant marked the band's first album of entirely instrumental and improvised music. Instant's 32 tracks feature shifting duos and trios of musicians performing on a wide array of conventional (electric guitars, reeds, brass, etc.) and non-conventional (e.g., toffee-tin bass) instruments.[1] Though the entire album could have fit onto one 70-minute CD, the band formatted it for a briefer listening experience with each of Instants 35-minute discs containing 16 short tracks.
Dean McFarlane's review for Allmusic is quite positive (in contrast to the middling score), calling it a culmination of the "stridently avant-garde direction" the band had taken "beginning with the Joggers and Smoggers album and explored extensively with cellist Tom Cora -- from the punchy chaotic punk rock of the band's '80s releases to total free improvisation." He writes that the "collection covers a lot of ground, from noisy vignettes in the vein of Fred Frith and Chris Cutler's workouts to subdued passages that recall even atonal avant-garde classical works; AMM and Derek Bailey also spring to mind. Instant is not all free-form, however -- in fact, the forms are held together by vague folk themes and the band's classic angular Captain Beefheart-like arrangements." He concludes by writing that the "two-CD set is certainly substantial in covering the band's multifaceted work, and with a group this unique and with so many compelling approaches that mix folk, punk, free jazz, and ethnic forms in such a singular fashion, there are few other recordings of this nature around." Trouser Press was similarly positive, calling it "[n]icely annotated, bravely executed and totally cool."[2]
Disc 1
Disc 2
Various band members also play organ, accordion, samples + tape, djembé-springs, mbira, reed shakers, musical saw, acoustic guitar, double-bass, chairs.