I spoke at length with Dolf Mulder, keeper of Popolvuh.nl, about my performance of Kailash at Roulette in 2023, the compassion and warmth of Florian Fricke's solo piano work in Kailash, and I also mentioned #noneckbluesband, #excepter, #Bushwick, Silent Barn 2.0 and the importance of venues. Thanks again to @mattmehlan for making this happen 💫 Look in our BIO for the link 🎹
EXCEPTER return with its first studio album of songs in over a decade: DISPLACER. Six tracks recorded in Chicago by Matt Mehlan at Experimental Sound Studios and completed at EXCEPTER home studio in Hudson Valley, New York. EXCEPTER has seen a number of line-ups in its tumultuous 25-year history, but now membership is boiled down to its essential duo of married couple Lala + John Fell Ryan. For DISPLACER, Lala wrote, sequenced, and performed all the music. JFR programmed the drums, mixed and processed the album. Lala + JFR alternate vocal duties and share production credit. DISPLACER was mastered by Andrew Weathers, whom EXCEPTER worked with on its soundtrack for the indie postmodern thriller comedy film Dream Team (2024 dir. Lev Kalman + Whitney Horn.) DISPLACER vinyl is currently being manufactured at Third Man Pressing in Detroit, Michigan. EXCEPTER are releasing the LP on its own Excepter Records imprint, and distributed through its own Bandcamp account. Release date is the first of May 2026, but DISPLACER is available for pre-order now, along with streaming of the first track on the album, an EXCEPTER version of Bob Marley’s prescient Rastafarian anti-apartheid anthem “WAR.” So raise the chalice or six, and ready yourself for what’s coming, a hissing, growling record of hallucinations, chanting spells, time traveling, riding the sparkling, grinding tank engine of the never ending forward motion machine that is EXCEPTER’S DISPLACER.
For preorder see link in bio
Yesterday, Isadora Duncan International Institute performed many short dance pieces, this one titled Tempest Tossed, at this gorgeous historic theater in Poughkeepsie, and the director claims lineage to Isadora's original choreography through Maria-Theresa Duncan, a student of Isadora Duncan who lived in Isadoras dance boarding school in the early 1900s. Isadora rejected ballet and theater, danced barefoot in her own style with her hair down, and people would lose their minds at her performances and demand encore after encore after encore. Her life story is so crazy and mindblowing and sad......still so hard to exist as a woman in the world but Isadora is eternal through her vision and art, not through how she died.
(Lala) I attended one night of the Centennial celebration of the #marthagraham dance company a few weeks ago. Martha started at the Denishawn School in LA, which fascinates me because it's a classic American 'be the job you want' situation of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn combining their names to create a new school and influential dance style. I am so intrigued by what motivated Martha, what created her intense drive to be a singular force in choreography, how she manifested her vision into reality. She was a flawed person and a #badbitch and dictatorial and sometimes mean.....she choreographed Appalachian Spring for herself as the bride and her then husband Erick Hawkins as the Husbandman. This was torture for her later seeing other people dance these roles after she and Erick got a divorce (they broke up on tour in Europe! Tour is brutal can you imagine the dehydration levels in 1950!) Anyway, seeing Appalachian Spring live was life changing. Having the courage to veer from the mainstream and follow your own path is terrifying. Her choreography conveys specific emotions that go beyond language or culture. Also Martha Grahama birthday is one day after Clares and I find that significant. Also #isadoraduncan dance troupe is performing here in Poughkeepsie May 2 and its my dream come true to see my two favorite choreographers work in the same season!!
Music by Henry Cowell, a collaborator of Marthas.
The first picture is me at Storm King Art Center just to give this Martha post a little algorhythm jolt and the rest are archival photos from the program and the curtain call for the Four Followers of the Revivalist, I love their #bonnets
Group Critique Fight Club returns for more music from left field in the Power Kingdom of the Hudson Valley on Thursday May 7th.
KA BAIRD
RAW & HEIGHTENED VOCAL EXPERIMENTATION
EXCEPTER
UNCLASSIFIABLE NOISE LIFER POWER COUPLE
KIRIN MCELWAIN
GENRE-BENDING IMPROVISATIONAL CELLO MASTERY
MATT WESTON
LIVE ELECTROACOUSTIC PERCUSSION
AND SYNTHESIS
@ REASON & RUCKUS
POUGHKEEPSIE NY
THURSDAY MAY 7TH 2026
$10-20 SLIDING SCALE 8 PM
George Grella wrote a gorgeous piece about us for Bandcamp, he also popped a lil mention into his substack Kill Yr Idols.....check it out via the LINKTREE, theres a great essay and some mentions of other bands to check out. I hate Strauss too. Also we are lugging all the gear into the car, driving it to Catskill, unloading and plugging it in at Avalon tomorrow night for a fun lineup......our competition for the night includes a female Black Sabbath cover band called Blonde Sabbath who are performing in Woodstock. If you attend our show I will tell ypu the story of me auditioning for Black Sabbitch, another female Black Sabbath cover band, while we lived in LA. It did not go well. I also have a story about auditioning to be in the doors cover band Peace Frog, I went to their show in Venice Beach and WOW.
