The Ex had formed and recorded their earliest material in 1979 during the heyday of the Dutch squatters movement.[4] Following the band's release of their All Corpses Smell the Same EP, the group's bassist René left the band for New Zealand and was replaced by then 15-year-old Bas.[5] The Ex reentered Dolf Planteijdt's Koeienverhuurbedrijf (literally "cow rental") Studio to record 10 songs for an LP that covered topics such as the Dutch housing crisis and squatters' movement ("Squatsong"), police brutality ("Warning-Shot"), environmental illness ("A Sense of Tumor"), and sexual assault ("Meanwhile").[6]
Release
Because Disturbing Domestic Peace's studio material clocked in at under 30 minutes, the band decided to press it at 45 RPM and add a bonus 7" of four live songs to make the package into a full-length release.[5] The album's cover depicts Dutch police in the process of evicting squatters, reflecting the heightened tensions and confrontations in Netherlands and other parts of Europe at that time.[6] The band priced the record at 10 Dutch guilders and sold out all 1,000 copies of its original October 1980 pressing within a week, prompting them to order further pressings that sold another 3,000 copies for that year's Christmas season. A final batch of 500 copies followed in early 1981.[5]
In addition to the bonus "Live Skive" 7", the original 12" album included a booklet of lyrics, starting the band's habit of including many inserts in their next 12 years' worth of releases.[7] The album was first issued on CD, along with The Ex's entire back catalog, in 1993, and then as a digital download on Bandcamp in the 2010s. The American label Superior Viaduct announced that it would be reissuing the album in its original 12"-with-bonus-7" format, including a 20-page booklet, in September 2020.[8]
Remark: The studio's name, "Joke's Koeienverhuurbedrijf" translates from Dutch as "Jenny's Cow Rentals, Ltd." ("Joke" is quite a common first name for women in the Netherlands).
Notes
Cogan, Brian. Encyclopedia of Punk Music and Culture. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. p. 70. ISBN978-0-313-33340-8.
Mount, Heather. "Three Looks into The Ex". In Crane, Larry. Tape Op: The Book about Creative Music Recording, Volume 2. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2010. pp. 230–233.
Robbins, Ira A., ed. The Trouser Press Guide to '90s Rock: The all-new 5th edition of The Trouser Press Record Guide. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN0684814374.
Sok, G.W. A Mix of Bricks & Valentines: Lyrics 1979–2009. New York: PM Press, 2011.
Temporary Services. Group Work. New York: Printed Matter, March 2007.
^Hager, Christa (December 9, 2019). "Happy Birthday, The Ex!". Musik-Blog - Wiener Zeitung Online (in German). Retrieved 17 May 2020.
^Shepherd, John (2005). Continuum encyclopedia of popular music of the world. Continuum. p. 266. ISBN978-0-8264-7436-0. ... became the centers for alternative, underground art. One of the bands of this era was The Ex, whose debut album, Disturbing Domestic Peace, was released in 1980, the heyday of the squatters' movement.
^Robbins, Ira A. (1991). The Trouser Press Record Guide. Collier Books. p. 229. ISBN978-0-02-036361-3. [Most of the Ex's albums contain vast amounts of printed material. Disturbing Domestic Peace includes a bonus live single and an illustrated lyrics booklet.
