Indian Jewelry - Invasive Exotics
Monitor Records by Keith Boyd 09.20.06
A nighttime call, at first imperceptible yet growing louder with each passing second, streams out from the swamp. All manner of night creatures are disturbed. This found-object Voodoo funk pulses and beckons. It shoots up the spine, shutting off the brain and commands the body to perform herky-jerky marionette dances by moonlight. Gauzy throbs of sound percolate in the air and massage the pleasure centers of the congregation. This is root music. This is the music that the herbs from the Botanica sing to your blood. This is vital wind music. This is Indian Jewelry's "Exotic Invasives"!
What an album! Dense and pleasant. Mysterious and funky. Indian Jewelry are conjuring up something truly original here. The influences are evident (Tragic Mulatto, Throbbing Gristle and touch of Crash Worship with a side of Gun Club) but hardly overshadow. The intense, packed and compressed sound on this disc warrants and rewards repeat listens. It's so hypnotic and in the red that it's easy to get lost in the layers for hours.
The playing is so over the top that it goes to your damn ovaries and rattles them! You're sure to give birth to conjoined twins after a few listens so watch out! This album ought to come with a warning label for the terminally uptight, "Stay away, this ain't your music!".
Although consisting of 3 core members, it seems that the lineup changes with rhizome like frequency. This isn't a band of regulars. It's a band of conspirators aiming for your heart and hips. They shoot with deadly accuracy so as the Boy Scouts say, "Be Prepared"!
I know nothing about this band (thanks to my super pal at Lou's Records, who I think, given his tastes and proclivities, would prefer to remain anonomous, for the recommendation and first taste!) but after several listens I'm willing to claim it as one of the best of the year. This spaced-out, Modern American, Aboriginal, Ghost Dance music is that good. It's almost not so much music as an x-ray of music origamied on top of itself a million times and played with manic conviction.
If you're looking for easily digested, hook-filled pop songs, you've come to the wrong place. But, if you want something real then by all means; turn on, tune in and FREAK-OUT!