page_title: Enormous Door
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Enormous Door / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Ken Vandermark, moers festival 2010
context_page_description: Enormous Door is an album by Dutch post-punk band The Ex and Brass Unbound, a quartet of horn players from four countries. The album was released in 2013 on The Ex's own label.
context_section_description: Emerging as an anarchist punk rock quartet in 1979, The Ex began to frequently work with jazz musicians within their first decade. Their 1989 album Joggers and Smoggers, 1995's Instant, and the singles series the band released between 1991 and 1992 featured extensive collaborations with members of the dutch free jazz ensemble Instant Composers Pool, and 2001's Een Rondje Holland presented a larger horn section as part of the band's Ex Orkest. As the band developed their repertoire into the 21st century, they turned their attentions to Ethiojazz and were backing Addis Ababa saxophonist Getachew Mekurya on world tours and for his 2006 album Moa Anbessa with  French, Dutch, and Canadian musicians Xavier Charles, Joost Buis, and Brodie West on clarinet, trombone and alto saxophone. The Ex's 2010 album Catch My Shoe featured trumpet work by Italy's Roy Paci, and when The Ex returned to record a final album with Mekurya in 2012, they were joined by Chicago reed player Ken Vandermark, as well as Buis, Charles, West and Wierbos.
  Amidst these collaborations with The Ex, a new international collective of horn players gradually formeed and by 2010 adopted the name "Brass Unbound" after Johan van der Keuken's 1993 film of the same name. In his film, van der Keuken follows the development of the European brass band tradition in the former Dutch colonies to include traditional marching bands to more hybridized forms brass music that combine European instruments with Ghanaian rhythms. Independent of concerts with Getatchew Mekurya, Brass Unbound began touring as a live act with The Ex in 2010. For these concerts, the ensemble wrote and improvised new material, as well as reworkings of songs from The Ex's catalog.
caption: Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark in 2010
exif: {}