Indian Jewelry at Barden's Boudoir

Indian Jewelry at Barden's Boudoir

14 November, 2008
by: Domzig

When I was a kid there was this cartoon called Dungeons and Dragons, and every episode started with a bunch of normal looking kids getting on a fair ground ride and being sucked into a fantasy world where they would be attacked by dragons, ghosts, manticores and Nazis for no real reason.

I only mention it because tonight Indian Jewelry are playing Barden's Boudoir and it's the closest anyone has got to going through the same trauma in real life.  A sort of mix of garage-punk, weird electronica and the psychedelic shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine, this band produce droning dream music that can cause freak out of seizure-inducing levels.

Playing to a crowd pitched into darkness, the band launch into moody art rock that has the effect of almost sucking all the air out of the room. Musically their quite minimal but the throbbing, repetitive sampler, pounding tribal drums and snarling guitars are strangely hypnotic, and seems to grip everyone in the room in some weird sort of trance. It's sort of like the sonic equivalent of seeing something really harsh like a dead rabbit: it's really gross and disturbing, but you can't turn away.

By about the second song the projectionist kicks in, which flickering images of old home movies, played pretty much on to the band's faces. Normally I think AV shit tends to ruin a band- normally I'm paying to much attention to spliced image of a man running on the spot to pay much attention to the music, but today it's excellent. The strobe lighting show just adds to the effect of feeling like you're trapped in a freezer with a knife wielding lunatic on the loose.

After about an hour, Indian Jewelry come to crashing end, and just like that the spell is broken. I know it sounds a bit lame, but the whole thing has been similar to what people describe drowning to be like- you panic for a bit, calm down, accept your fate, and then when you're pulled up from the drink, you pant for air and go ‘fuck! I made it?' with exhilaration that you made it out alive.

Music that can cause near death experiences?  Now that's really psychedelic.

Click here to see who else is playing Barden's Boudoir. For a list of everything else that going on in London, click right here.

Domzig