In Stranger Suggests:

Psychic Ills, Indian Jewelry, Backward Masks

(Funhouse) Local psychedelic-arts collective Portable Shrines has hit the jackpot tonight, landing two of America's finest mind-warpers. Indian Jewelry, from Texas, excel at both erecting majestic drones and forging a sort of tantric garage rock that makes a thrilling virtue out of repetitive, distortion-saturated riffing. Brooklyn's Psychic Ills have morphed from 13th Floor Elevators/Spacemen 3 acolytes into a much stranger beast, a kind of lysergic dub unit. On the recent Mirror Eye, their tracks throb, glow, and drift in a disorienting haze. (Funhouse, 206 Fifth Ave N, 374-8400. 9:30 pm, $7, 21+.) DAVE SEGAL

In Heavy Mental:

Cage, Yak Ballz, Rudy and the Rhetoric, Sadistik

(Nectar) The story of Cage's struggle with mental illness and abusive parents shaped the content and mood of his second full-length album, Hell's Winter, which was released in 2005 by his current label, Definitive Jux. However, his first full-length album, Movies for the Blind, was shaped by hedonistic and self-destructive drives. He rapped about lots of sex ("They try to kill me through my dick with these hos too much"), lots of drugs ("Had a PCP overdose, and I still smoke"), and lots of horror gore ("My whole career been a upstream kayak through blood"). But those shocking images and themes did not capture or match the true spirit of the underground, which is more about the mental—be it the metaphysics of Scienz of Life, the futurism of Cannibal Ox, the surrealism of MF Doom, or the skills for skills' sake (hiphop's version of ''l'art pour l'art'') of Eyedea & Abilities.

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