"Trying to situate beautiful pretty music amongst chaos": An interview with Ex Agent.
Evo, Eve and Alfie of rising Bristol experimental rockers Ex Agent discuss no-wave, weaving narrative into live music, and the fleeting beauty of improvisation.
Ex Agent is a band like few others, their mere existence often appears as a minor miracle. Their sound is distinct and uncanny, atmospheric jazz colliding with angular math rock and stomps of screeching noise rock dissonance. With live performances that act as engaging miniature narratives within themselves. The band's free-form improvisational style turns each performance into a true spectacle as songs become dismantled and reconstructed as the band reaches a serene climax that leaves the listener feeling like a mountaineer gazing out across the peak after a long treacherous climb.
This description is indulgently grandiose but it feels the most fitting way to introduce them. Since first seeing them on New Year's 2023 Ex Agent has remained for me one of the most interesting bands in the UK’s current musical landscape. Their sound is so unique and perfectly balanced between experimentalism and captivation that it's impossible to forget. While lazy comparisons could be made to the early work of Black Country, New Road, and their ilk but such comparisons fall drastically short of capturing the band's sound.
There’s an understanding of history here, an appreciation of the angular and avant-garde from New York no-wave, to early American post-rock. and even Bristol's rich history of experimental post-punk. Yet they're not a band beholden to their influences, rather Ex Agent are an ever-evolving musical organism. Each performance unpeeling another layer of their complex sonic landscape.
They’re a band that appears as a testament to the vibrant ferocity of Bristol’s current scene. Across the quintet's membership, you can form a spiderweb of some of the very best bands out of Bristol at the moment such as Foot Foot, Sunglassz Vendor, Zalizo, Broadsheets, and HAAL. The eclecticism of the scene bleeds in and out of Ex Agent’s music. The fact that they appear so much more than the sum of these parts is perhaps the best compliment anyone could give to their vibrant musical chemistry.
Now two years into their career the band appears more poised than ever to mark themselves out as genuine forerunners in the field of experimental rock. Last year already showed a hint of their nightmarish brilliance to the world via their trashing debut single ‘Clutch/5’ but that was only a taste of the behemoth that the band has now become. Their sound is more honed than ever and, hints of an EP are beginning to circulate so there was no better time than the present to sit down with guitarists Alfie Hayes and Evo Ethel and bassist Eve Rosenberg for a chat. The trio were engaging company as they discussed the details of their eclectic influences, the complexities of adapting no-wave away from its New York origins, and their experiences playing with legends Lee Ranaldo and Mark Stewart.
When I first heard of you guys on headfirst there was an accompanying for fans of bit which for you guys was Pere Ubu, Lounge Lizards, and Tortoise. To me that connotates a lot of the more out-there side of early post-punk, avant-garde jazz, and early post-rock respectively. Do you think that those descriptors are particularly accurate to your sound?
Evo: Nah no [laughs]
Alfie: Do you not reckon?
Eve: I wrote that to be fair.
Evo: I think maybe they were but that was when we first started.
Alfie: I didn’t realise but you put that, Eve.
Evo: What was it Pere Ubu, Lounge Lizards and Tortoise?
Alfie: I think Lounge Lizards and Tortoise, Tortoise less so, maybe some bits of it.
Evo: I think a lot of the newer stuff we’ve been writing is a lot more Tortoisey.
Alfie: It’s an interesting cause when I first got together with these guys I didn’t know any of those bands. So, I was exposed to them by being in the band. So, I suppose I’m not at liberty to say if it’s accurate or not.
In that case what bands would you use to describe your sound?
Evo: I think some of the more abrasive side of the late 70’s New York scene. Like James Chance, Glenn Branca, not really Suicide. But lots of free jazz artists, Peter Brotzmann, I showed Ethan the mix and he was like this is very Naked City so John Zorn. Dog Faced Hermans as well.
I can definitely see Dogfaced Hermans, a lot of This Heat as well.
Alfie: Oh yeah.
Evo: Totally. That’s one of our biggest.
Alfie: Wasn’t it you and Aidan, our drummer, met at the lanes and first bonded over This Heat?
Evo: That was the first band we talked about, and the first band where we were like we want to start making music like this.
From the artists you mentioned, I’m seeing a quite heavy no-wave influence. It’s quite interesting to draw from no-wave cause it’s a scene so situated in Downton seventies New York. Do you find when you make music you feel a distance from that sound because of the difference in place and time?
Evo: I think so, but I think a lot of the bands we mentioned talking about no-wave is all those bands sounded so so different. So, I think it’s more the ethos of how we make music is similar.
Alfie: Inspired by more than anything else.
Evo: But there's also much prettier stuff we write which is a lot more inspired by stuff like Tortoise.
Alfie: Didn’t Archie say we were trying to situate beautiful pretty music amongst chaos? Because that’s pretty much our entire ethos. It could be some of the heaviest shit you ever heard
or some of the most twinkly sparkly stuff that makes you cry. But that’s what I like about it.
I’ve seen you guys a few times and you always seem to end on these really beautiful bits of post-rock, when you’re structuring the setlist do you find it important to have an alteration between those two stages of the really nice stuff and the really heavy stuff?
Evo: I think we like to get as much of it in as possible but most of our sets are half an hour long and when we’ve worked on longer sets before we try to have more of a bend of both. But I think Aidan our drummer likes to lean more towards the heavy side of it.
Alfie: I remember when both of you [Evo and Eve] did that interview, it was the Bristol 24/7 one you said about being influenced by art outside of music, like theatres and film. I suppose you could say we base the set and the narrative of the set around certain other art like that rather
than what other bands would be doing.
I read that Bristol 24/7 interview as well and it made me interested in what influences beyond music go into your work.
Evo: I think just the way people made films in French new wave, how it was very improvised and DIY like even Greek weird wave which Yorgos Lanthimos came out of. Performance art
as well though we haven’t incorporated it into our sets in a little while.
Oh yeah, I remember you guys used to have a guy with a lamp on his head perform with you.
Eve: Yeah, our gimmick, gets people to come to our shows cause they just want to see the lamp.
Is that why you use it less now, to break free from the lamp?
Alfie: We kinda retired the character, didn’t we? Killed him off.
Evo: I think I’d love to have more performance-based art in our sets, but doing it in a way where we have certain performance artists coming on at different times and we're almost soundtracking their performance.
Eve: The audience perceives it very differently as well. Some people are coming solely for that.
Alfie: Yeah, “have you seen that band with the lamp?”
Eve: But some people hate it. We did get slammed in a review of a show we did at Shackwell Arms because they thought it was the most pretentious thing they'd ever seen.
Really?
Alfie: It was a show that Ollie from Squid curated, and I thought it went down well when were there. It was packed and people were loving it. But that was one of our first live reviews and we were like right oh, oh fuck.
Evo: It was awful.
Eve: They hated it. Actually, they didn’t even mention the music in the review, they just criticised us based purely on appearance.
Alfie: [laughs] “These guys are clearly wankers”.
Taking about visuals do you guys aim for a specific visual aesthetic? Because I noticed all your posts have these wonderful collages. So, I was wondering is there a clear visual aesthetic you guys are aiming for?
Evo: With our Instagram, yes but we just started it that way, we're stuck in it now [laughs]. I think when we started even with our name Ex Agent it was meant to be all noir-inspired, I think we’ve broken out of that quite a lot. I think that was an initial drive to go into a certain direction aesthetically and I think the posters align with that.
Alfie: I think that because it’s a necessity in the modern music industry to do all the advertising yourself, especially at this level of grassroots music. You (Evo) doing those collages was almost your answer to not wanting to conform. Rather than posting posters, you were like I’m just gonna make it look nice with some photos I’ve done anyway. And a lot of the photos are either photos you take or our mates take and it’s showcasing that as much as what it’s supposed to be advertising.
Evo: I think that’s the other thing, with the Instagram and the posters and stuff like that, is that I like to showcase other local artists and friends.
Alfie: I suppose it’s a, if you have to do it this is the way you ought to do it sort of thing.
Speaking of local artists, do you find that a lot of local artists in Bristol inspire you?
Evo: Harry?
Alfie: I suppose he plays with us as well.
Evo: Hmm do you (Eve) think were heavily inspired by our community?
Eve: I’d say definitely the Bristol improv scene.
Alfie: But that’d be going back to Harry. I think for me rather than a specific artist is Bristol as a city and its openness to new things.
Eve: weird things.
Alfie: Yeah, weird things, you’ll usually get an audience at your gig and it can be a ten-pound gig or a free gig. People are usually interested in what people have to offer in Bristol and it fosters creativity because no one has to conform. Cause you’ll get bills of people that shouldn’t work together, and it leads to a much more interesting night, and everyone watches each other, and I love that. So, it’s probably the ethos of Bristol rather than anyone specific.
I can definitely see that; I went to university in Birmingham, and it felt quite divided up into scenes which Bristol really isn’t.
Alfie: I mean I had this last week at the cellar door gig where I met you but none of the band should conventionally work together but they did, and it makes it way more interesting. Especially with all the artists in the backroom as well where you had soundscapes, photography, painting, sculptures, and stuff like that, it was wicked. I’m from Devon and there’s nothing like that at all in Exeter, I can’t really speak for London but we’ve played there quite a lot and it is good, but it doesn’t really feel the same. But in Bristol, you see the same people crop up at a hardcore show as you would at an improv jazz show, everyone goes to each other’s shows here.
Speaking of Bristol as a community you’re all involved in different bands such as HAAL, Foot Foot, Zalizo, and Sunglassz Vendor. Do you find that your work in those other bands influences your work in Ex Agent?
Evo: I think automatically it does, but I wouldn’t say directly. For me, I’d take approaches in a different band that might help my approach in Ex Agent.
Alfie: I think we all found each other through the band scene. Even before our current projects, we were all in separate things and we kinda congregated in Bristol and vaguely knew each other from that. But I think if anything being in Ex Agent makes what I’m writing for HAAL stronger cause I've learnt so much from the others. Everyone in Ex Agent is such a good musician that it almost pissed me off at the start, but it was lovely to be in a practice room with them all and to foster new ideas and get exposed to new artists.
Evo: that’s a lot of where our sound comes from, all our music tastes are very different. There are meeting points.
Alfie: Vague intersections isn’t it? Even the writing process reflects that because we're all very opinionated, it can even be the hertz of a particular frequency but it’s good because I feel like a lot of bands might split up because of that. But I suppose we're founded upon that.
Do any of you think there are particular influences that you bring to the table that maybe the other members don’t?
Alfie: Well I’m a metalhead really.
Eve: I think you bring a really mathy edge to your playing.
Alfie: Yeah, because on paper it almost doesn’t work, but when we play live because of the nature of playing live where it happens now and that’s it, it forces me to come up with stuff I otherwise couldn’t do. Though when it came to recording the tune I had to figure out a solo I did, and I just couldn’t. Fleeting finite nature of it I suppose.
Evo: I didn’t start playing music till I was like sixteen or something, and I just liked hardcore bands, and listened to a lot of punk music. I don’t know what I bring different to Ex Agent specifically as it’s a combination of a lot of different things. But Ex Agent for me, and I’m sure it’s very common for any band to say this, we want to try and make something different. But not in a way where it’s just unlistenable. Often when we write a song ill want to make it a bit weirder or more interesting. But I don’t think I bring any sort of specific style.
Alfie: I’d never heard of no-wave before Ex Agent, I think I’d seen a picture of James Chance before and was like oh that guy. But exposure to that with my conventional I’m into metal, I’m into industrial y’know these established genres because no-wave is one end of the spectrum and rock is another we met in this weird middle ground. I always think that if all of us were exposed no-wave before we would’ve just been an imitation of the no-wave bands.
Evo: I don’t think you can be though, like James Chance sounds nothing like Suicide.
Alfie: Then again that’s my conventional thinking. Eve what about you?
Eve: I just played guitar in indie bands so Pixies, and Pavement are my big influences from when I first started playing music when I was a teenager.
I guess there’s a bit of the Pixies' loud and quiet with the dissonance and beauty in Ex Agent.
Eve: Yeah.
Alfie: Yeah, that’s a good shout.
You guys often talk about how your shows are partially improvised, I know it’s hard to put a number on it but how much of it would you say is improvisational or structured?
Eve: I think at the start it was quite 50/50 but it definitely became a lot more structured than that.
Evo: There’s actually really orchestrated stuff.
Eve: Although even with the songs we’ve written we don’t play our songs section to section the same.
Alfie: It’s up to Aidan isn’t it?
Eve: Yeah, it’s up to Aidan. Cause he’s got some drummer ADHD where he plays things differently every time.
Alfie: We played ‘Clutch/5’ the other day for the first time in ages and I’m so sure it was so much faster and shorter than it ever is on the recording. But the orchestrated stuff we go off cues quite a lot so we’ll write A setlist but it won’t be were playing this song, it’ll be were playing this song, and then we're gonna do this vibe. And then Aidan or Eve or Archie or Evo will do something to indicate we’re switching into this vibe now.
Evo: I think we need transitional sections within our songs to blend stuff together and pretty much all of that could be perceived as improv. Like the last set, we had the end of the five-track and it was just a lounge section and then a free jazz noise section. The whole horn thing we did the other day was completely improvised, it always is. With 'Clutch' the first single we released all the end of that was fully improvised.
Alfie: I was about to say I don’t think the end of ‘Clutch’ where the drums stop and it goes into a piano bit, I don’t think we could ever play that again. Except maybe Archie, Archie’s good enough to learn that again.
Mentioning ‘Clutch’ what motivated you to choose that track as your debut single?
Eve: we kinda had a tough time when we first went into a recording studio not really knowing what we wanted or maybe not choosing the right place or right engineer. We recorded three songs and ‘Clutch’ was the only one we could really salvage, we just weren’t happy with the others. We never intentionally chose that as our lead single or strongest song necessarily.
Evo: I think we're pretty hard on ourselves with production as well.
Alfie: That’s another difference in the band I’m quite easygoing with it but Evo and Eve are very specific with what they want. Which is great I think. Originally there was a bass change you wanted on ‘Clutch’ and I was like it doesn’t matter but then you did it and I was completely sold. The recordings we’ve been doing recently we’ve had more creative control over and Evo’s been in the studio a lot more polishing it off behind the scenes. It’s been a much smoother process but we could’ve only learned that doing ‘Clutch’ first and I’m glad we saved the tracks that we have on the EP for this.
Do you find recording is a big switch-up for you guys, especially with how your live shows are partially improvised?
Evo: I think so but there’s a lot of improvisation in the recording process. Two of the tracks on our ep are fully improvised but I think it makes recording quite tough. A lot of the time we're in the studio and we don’t have something fully finished, or we’ve got improvised sections in our songs, but then when you're recording it’s like this is the final product.
I saw on Instagram that for the EP you have a choir how did that come about?
Alfie: Evo just having a cool idea, then getting in touch with a church in Easton.
Evo: but then again that was supposed to be a whole different section.
Alfie: was it?
Evo: We’ve played it a few times where I just do that really loose guitar part and sing over it. And now we’ve got them layered on top of each other, Eve’s idea.
Alfie: And it’s made up of just our mates and friends from the scene what’s the church called?
Evo: St. Annes
Alfie: St. Anne’s in Eastville wicked church. Evo and Archie recorded it.
Eve: We had to go to more unconventional places for recording purely as a means to just save money, but it's worked in our favour I think because recording in a church sounds pretty cool with the natural reverb.
Alfie: It sits beautifully I think, Evo sent a recent mix over the other day. I was listening whilst running and it nearly gave me an existential crisis, I was like Jesus it’s so pretty.
Going back to the realm of improvisation you guys did an improvised set with Mark Stewart from The Pop Group and Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth. How did that occur and what was that experience like?
Evo: Bizarre experience.
Eve: A nightmare.
Evo: Yeah nightmarish.
Alfie: I enjoyed it, but I’d never do it again though we literally can’t.
Evo: Lee Ranaldo was doing an acoustic tour, and we really wanted the support but it’s an acoustic tour so I don’t think we’d really sit that well.
Eve: But Lee when he’s on tour often plays with local jazz bands or improv groups wherever he is so he was pretty up for it.
Alfie: It was almost like a pissed idea “oh maybe they’ll be up for it oh shit they are”.
Evo: I don’t have much else to say about it.
Alfie: I do, it was weird. It was deeply strange. We had Natalie from Minor Conflict on Harp and Harry Furniss, and Gareth Seger from the Pop Group came as well. Essentially just with Natalie and Harry, we practiced a set that we had because it was split into two halves, there was a set that was just us as the support. Then the second half, Lee Ranaldo and Mark Stewart came out, they did a set together of improv and then we joined them. It turned into I don’t know how to describe it, hate maybe?
Eve: One of the problems of improv is how do you end it, and that became really apparent on that night because it just didn’t end. No one wanted to pull the plug.
Evo: Also, people's interpretations of improv vary because Mark Stewart's interpretation of improv was very different from ours.
Eve: We were in an email thread with Mark Stewart and Lee Ranaldo and they wanted us to learn these classic twelve-bar blues things which we just didn’t. And then Mark RIP was just kinda barking instructions at us, do this do this.
Evo: I think he maybe thought we were proper session jazz musicians which we weren’t.
Alfie: it very quickly disintegrated from an improv gig into some sort of weird performance art.
Eve: We eventually one by one left the stage and it was just Mark Stewart arguing with an audience member.
Alfie: But yeah, again not really knowing no-wave I didn’t really know the Pop Group and Mark Stewart beyond him being some cult Bristol hero, and the others liked him. I met him and he was chill to chat too but also, I don’t know how to explain it but he was chatting utter mental nonsense. It was quite funny to be around but also at the same time, I couldn’t figure out which was a bit and which was authentically him. I’ve since listened to Pop Group and I think they’re wicked but one of the telling signs is when we got there and we were setting up for soundcheck Gareth who was obviously in the band (The Pop Group) really didn’t want to be there I don’t think.
Eve: He was just concerned about Mark. Can I just add this Gareth Seger is probably one of the best musicians I’ve ever played with or witnessed playing, he was amazing.
Evo: He was also in Rip Rig and Panic that’s a big Ex Agent influence.
Bouncing off that in the future are there any other musicians you’d like to collaborate with?
Evo: I'd like to work with Charles Hayward.
Eve: And his current project Abstract Concrete, I’d love to play with them.
Evo: I’d also love to do an album like Ex Agent and friends, just writing a load of material with certain musicians in mind. Just people in the local scene I’d really like to get Natalie on more recordings, I really like working with Natalie, she’s great.
Alfie: Chris Martin?
Evo: Who’s that?
Alfie: Coldplay, who’s that? Come on.
Have there been any other sets you’ve found particularly interesting to play or maybe difficult?
Alfie: I think we’ve been lucky, every gig has been chill really.
Evo: Camden?
Alfie: It wasn’t as bad as you guys thought it was.
Eve: That was one of my favourite shows.
Evo: The worst shows for you are always your favourite ones.
Alfie: That’s how no-wave Eve is.
Eve: No, I’m more focused on how we perform even if there are five people in the crowd, I don't get too bogged down in all of that. Though the last show we performed at the Lanes which you were at I think the UOB gig society all attended, which of course cool and great for them but seeing people enjoying and dancing to our music threw me off a bit.
Alfie: Shit, people enjoy it?
Eve: [laughs] It kinda made me feel weird.
Alfie: They’re supposed to hate this.
Oh yeah, I remember that, there was a group of punk kids kinda anxiously two-stepping along trying to hit the groove right.
Alfie: We haven’t really had that before I liked it.
Eve: That’s why it kinda threw me off I wasn’t expecting that.
The first gig of yours I saw was that New Year’s gig where all the other bands were doing cover sets.
Eve: Oh god.
Alfie: That was one of my favourite gigs.
Eve: That’s my least favourite show we’ve ever done.
I was anxious going in cause I was very excited to see you guys but also hoping you wouldn’t actually do any covers.
Alfie: There we go.
I remember you guys just shouted Happy New Year's down the mic occasionally instead.
Eve: Aidan or was it Archie tried to usher us into some Christmas covers and I remember just freezing up.
Evo: When we did the end of ‘new song’ I played jingle bells.
Eve: I hated it.
Alfie: I thought it was a good show.
Evo: I thought it sounded quite bad.
I was there with Evan who I run the blog with and we were both like ‘wow that was incredible I’m so glad they didn’t do any covers’. Though if you had to do a cover set what covers would you do?
Evo: We’ve talked about this haven’t we, you want to cover Elbow.
Eve: I forgot I ever said that.
Alfie: I’d like to do something really extrapolated and not anything to do with us.
Evo: I’d really like to do pop songs and make them our sort of style.
What would be the number 1 pop song you guys would want to cover?
Alfie: I’d love to do a Destiny’s Child tune.
Evo: I wanna do Robert De Niro’s Waiting, do you know what that song's called?
Eve: No?
Evo: Y’know ‘Robert DeNiros Waitiiing’.
Eve: No who’s it by?
Alfie: Robert De Niro?
Evo: I can’t remember who it’s by. There are some modern pop songs that I don’t actually know the names of that could be fun.
Could do some Sabrina Carpenter covers maybe?
Alfie: Espresso, that’s a tune I’m down for it. Chappell Roan?
Eve: I love Chappell Roan.
With the use of vocals in your work, in both ‘Clutch’ and your live performances they seem not necessarily buried but more part of the wider mix is that on purpose?
Alfie: Yeah defo.
Evo: Definitely, I think partly because I really struggle with doing vocals, and a lot of the shouty stuff is improvised. But with our production, we try to make them sit right so you can hear them.
Eve: I think going back to your question of influences that’s where a lot of the post-rock influence comes in. Obviously Slint’s production and how their vocals sit.
I really like the lyrics to ‘Clutch/5’ and I found them quite evocative and poetic so specifically for you Evo are there any influences that go into your lyrics?
Evo: Not so much influences, I don’t read too much poetry but I do a lot of stream-of-consciousness writing. I’ll have sheets and sheets of paper and just rearrange it all to try and form some sort of narrative. I also try not to use the word ‘I’ very often, I also really like to play with gender and pronouns. I try to mix it up so it’s not so obvious, to almost make it sound quite confused. I think it fits well the whole Ex Agent style. But I don’t think about it an awful lot, we're not really a vocal band. But I do really like writing, though most of the time the lyrics come after.
I think that lack of ‘I’ is really interesting, I remember a lecturer at uni gave me a similar piece of advice. I think that it works really well with the disorientating nature of your music.
Evo: I also don’t want it to be centered around me at all. I want it to be part of the music, more based around a narrative or collective feeling.
Alfie: It’s one part of a whole isn’t it rather than us soundtracking your lyrics
Evo: Yeah.
I think that aligns with how you guys perform, it never feels like there’s a set bandleader or anything. Rather it comes across as a quite organic collective of musicians. As a final question are there any artists both in and outside of Bristol you guys have your eyes on
Evo: Sarahsson is great, Biped, Scops.
Alfie: Sans Froid is a wicked band as well saw them at Arctangent.
Evo: There's a London-based band Gentle Stranger they’re really really great.
Eve: I don’t know why I’m drawing a blank, there are so many.
Evo: Some of the people we mentioned are smaller or more up-and-coming but Still House Plants are fucking insane. They’re one of my favourite new bands to come out.
Alfie: I’m looking at what I added to my phone recently. I really like Grandchild as well they’re another Bristol band, they released a drone tape recently it was very very cool. There are a few actual artists as well, Scrungo Incorporated wicked guy, like how we said we're influenced by other forms of media he’ll do that vice versa, so he’ll paint to a soundtrack. Shout out to my girlfriend as well Jess Agnew she’s a great photographer.
Eve: Honesty Evo’s other projects, Foot Foot may be my favourite Bristol band.
Ex Agent’s debut single Clutch/5 is available on Bandcamp and streaming.
The band is also performing at Rough Trade Bristol with Jerome and Spectres on the 31st of October and with Moin on the 5th of December.