The Ex - Joggers & Smoggers (2026 Reissue) The Ex

Even in a trajectory that was filled with drastic bends and turns, Joggers & Smoggers came as a surprise. If Aural Guerilla (1988) was an attempt to catch the band’s manic live energy in the studio, with seething results, follow-up Joggers & Smoggers was an attempt to ignore nearly all limitations.

These 34 songs brim with a limitless eclecticism, combining the band’s legendary intensity with playful detours, literary inventions and references, and successful collaborations (from noise-rockers, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, to Amsterdam-based improvisers, Ab Baars and Wolter Wierbos, and a string of already familiar friends and allies).

What you get is no longer a tightly executed batch of songs, but a generous burst of creativity.

On this double album, The Ex combines restlessness, playfulness, ethnic influences and improvisatory ideas of the kind that were already hinted at on releases such as Dignity Of Labour (1983) and Blueprints For a Blackout (1984).

The result is their most sprawling and unique album up to that point, perhaps one of their true ‘key releases’, and one that provided the foundation on which their upcoming collaboration with Tom Cora could flourish.