We're Chasing the Rats Out! An Interview with Indian Jewelry by Keith Boyd 10.06.06
Indian Jewelry makes the kind of "Wild Rumpus" sounds that the castaway kids do around their bonfire in "The Lord of the Flies". It's equal parts liberating and dangerous. Their new CD, "Invasive Exotics" (Monitor Records) is a strange and hypnotic ride through the subconscious that doesn't only aim at the head, but shakes your body as well. This mutant hybrid of ethno-voodoo, industrial death disco is just the right tonic for these gray times. It's a multi-headed and colorful mix that after repeated listens reveals a literate and political undertone. Indian jewelry is letting their freak flag fly and believe me folks, we're all the better for it! I recently shot a few questions their way via email and this is what they had to say.

1. Is Indian Jewelry's music more solar or lunar? How so?

Erika says solar. I say lunar, but we try in our way to get along.

2. Are you casting spells with this music? If so, what are they directed at?  If not, why?

While at various times various sorts of people have accused us of spellcasting and mesmerism in a lame and transparent attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own bad behavior the fact is that this is not so.  We once tried casting a spell with subliminal messages and calculated frequencies but it backfired.  

3. What are your favorite sounds?

We are partial to panting dogs, low frequencies, heartbeats, and fast-moving trains. We're also amenable to the music made by friends of ours such as jana hunter, the wiggins, rua minx, leslie keffer, a pink cloud, the creeping nobodies, genders, the electric set, psychic ills, wicked poseur, ariel pink, eystek, tusco terror, clipd beaks, as well as a number of others.

4. What is the sexiest sound?

The human voice, whispering to ear-- not asthmatic.

5. What is the one instrument you couldn't do Indian Jewelry without?

An atlas.

6. Give me three reasons to be cheerful.

Longmont Potion Castle, Sacha Baron Cohen, Holy Mountain

7. Any thoughts on Pluto recently being "de-planeted"?

See, science don't know.

8. Where is evil emanating from these days?

Its hard to be glib about this one, but let's try anyway.  Let's ignore US foreign policy advisors and decision makers.  Let's turn a blind eye to big business and crony capitalists like the Halliburton Corporation, Diebold, Disney, Dow, GE, and Monsanto. Forget about the nexus between the arms trade, petroleum concerns, the Christian right, and the apartheid state of Israel .  Get over genetically modified food, the IMF/WTO, latterday red-baiters, homophobes, racists, armchair razorbacks, and theo-nationalists worldwide.  Let's just say that evil is emanating from stupid people and smart people alike. 

9. What's the wildest thing you've ever had go down at a gig?

We are calm people, and our music is calmative to the point of being serene.  However, we once played a set in a gallery in Houston while it was on fire and also in the smoke while the same fire was being extinguished.  People have regularly come to us after shows with bloody hands, blackened eyes, bruised faces, and general damage.  People have tried to decapitate us by throwing cymbals at our necks during shows in New York City and Athens Ohio (we don't exist, ergo we don't die.)  A Dominican street gang forced us to play a show in Brooklyn by holding our friends in the band Inoculist at knifepoint.  A race riot broke out between warring fraternities outside a Halloween show in Kent Ohio.  San Diego is nuts. Houston is nuts. Knoxville people can party.  Ohio is out of hand.

10. What are the greatest books of all time?

We have something of a bias toward occidental Nineteenth and Twentieth Century literature. Nonetheless,  here is a very loose start: The brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoevsky, the recognitions by william gaddis, war and peace by leo tolstoy, the delicate prey by paul bowles, journey to the end of the night by louis ferdinand celine, mother courage and her children by bertolt brecht, 60 stories by donald barthelme, satires by juvenal, cronopios and famas by julio cortazar, labyrinths by jorge luis borges, catch 22 by joseph heller, birds of america by lorrie moore, united states by gore vidal, moby dick by herman melville, the collected stories of flannery o'connor, antipoems by nicanor parra, twilight of the idols by friedrich nietzsche, collected poetry of ts eliot, jabberwocky by lewis carroll, collected poetry of pablo neruda, cathedral by raymond carver, medea by euripedes, white goddess by robert graves, 100 years of solitude by gabriel garcia marquez, invisible cities by italo calvino,  and the canterbury tales by geoffrey chaucer.

Read our review of Indian Jewlery - Invasive Exotics