Get tickets to Ex-Easter Island Head at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam.

Ex-Easter Island Head: Hypnotic, rhythmic drones combined with prepared electric guitars

Ex-Easter Island Head is a British collective of composers and musicians that breathes new life into the electric guitar.

Liverpool’s Ex-Easter Island Head creates a mesmerising, body-buzzing sound built from prepared tabletop guitars, mallets, tiny motors and found objects. Minimal means, shaped into maximum intensity: tight, warm and surprisingly emotional. The Guardian called their work “some of the boldest experiments in British music.” 

“... some of the boldest experiments in British music.” Get tickets!

Fresh from widespread acclaim for their album Norther (2024), which topped The Quietus magazine's Albums of the Year, the quartet brings its entrancing live ritual to the Muziekgebouw’s Kleine Zaal. Expect pulsating overtones, slowly unfolding rhythms and a shimmering thrum that turns time elastic. 

How do they make the sound?

Ex-Easter Island Head places standard electric guitars flat on stands, wedge sticks or keys under the strings, runs haptic phone motors across the wood, and plays with mallets; a tactile choreography that yields hovering drones, delicate halos of resonance and polyrhythmic patterns. It’s experimental by design but presented with the immediacy of a band: “experimental music presented as entertainment.” 

On Norther, the group further expanded its palette by building six-note randomisers from phone motors for the opener Weather, and channelling amplified vocal fragments into the strings for Magnetic Language. The result, wrote The Quietus, is urgency and beauty “tightly intertwined.”

Psyche yourself up while enjoying the support act, Sun Kit

The evening opens with Sun Kit, a Berlin-formed duo weaving warm distortion, lo-fi echoes and bittersweet melodies into expansive, reverberant songs, “a raw rock band sound under an ethereal electronic veil.” A perfect prelude for a night where atmosphere becomes architecture. 

Part of an unconventional music series, The Rest is Noise

The Rest is Noise series presents unconventional creators who push boundaries and connect worlds. Expect overlaps with contemporary music, electronic club music, audiovisual art, under-exposed movements, and everything in between, at the Muziekgebouw and the Bimhuis.

Presented within The Rest is Noise, this concert puts you up close with a quartet that has quietly redefined the guitar’s possibilities. 

Event details

• Date & time: Tuesday, 28 April 2026, 20:30–22:30 (doors/programme below)
• Venue: Kleine Zaal, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ
• Programme: support Sun Kit at 8.30 pm, main act Ex-Easter Island Head at 9.30pm
• Get your tickets on the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ  website