Quantcast

Call for Feature Essays About Any Aspect of Popular Culture, Present or Past

Music
cover art

Num9

The Glow-Worm's Resistance

(Acuarela; US: 5 Dec 2006; UK: 22 Jan 2007)

The CD they describe in the press kit sounds lovely. I quote: “Equipped with a computer, electric guitars, Spanish guitars, synthesisers of all shapes and sizes and his voice, he [Coque Yturriaga, ex-Migala guitarist] opens a door revealing syncopated beats and heady rhythms. ... Created with a freshness and an immediacy unheard of in the panorama of independent music in Spain, it ... arrives at a unique place ... [a] disturbing, melancholic and euphoric world.” Do you see what I mean when I say it sounds lovely? A euphoric world! I like euphoric worlds. Fresh and immediate? Nice. But then I put on the album and the beats sound muddy, the rhythm seems too subdued and undernourished to be heady, and the darkness of the music is not disturbing, it’s more like an underlit swamp. Partly this muddiness comes from Yturriaga’s voice, which is thin, unemphatic, and too uncertain for melancholy or euphoria. I read the press kit and then listen to the CD and feel as if I’m missing something. Any ideas?

Rating:

Comments
Now on PopMatters
Unicycle Loves You: Failure (Capsule Reviews) [Fri, 1:00 am]
Bill Hicks: The Essential Collection (Reviews) [Fri, 1:00 am]
Sharon Lewis & Texas Fire: The Real Deal (Capsule Reviews) [Fri, 1:00 am]
Mod Film Noir: 'Brighton Rock' (Reviews) [Fri, 1:00 am]
Gross Magic: Teen Jamz (Capsule Reviews) [Fri, 1:00 am]
Glee Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 (Reviews) [Fri, 1:00 am]
  1. 'Nebraska': Bruce Springsteen's 'Heart of Darkness' (Columns)
  2. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 1: From 13Ghosts to Friendly Fires (Features)
  3. Counterbalance No. 66: Carole King’s 'Tapestry' (Sound Affects)
  4. The Best Games of 2011 (Features)
  5. Not-So-Central Casting: Kevin Smith and the Birth of the Reality Podcast (Features)
  6. The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader)
  7. The 10 Greatest Movie Spies Ever (Short Ends and Leader)
  8. 'Amy' Is a Horror Game That Is Broken in All the Right Ways (Moving Pixels)
  9. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 2: From the Go! Team to the Phoenix Foundation (Features)
  10. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 3: From Real Estate to Youth Lagoon (Features)
  11. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Reviews)
  12. Get Off of My Cloud!: 'Collecting' Music in the Digital Age (Features)
  13. The Top 15 Madonna Singles of All Time (Sound Affects)
  14. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Reviews)
  15. Google and the Production of Curiosity (Marginal Utility)
  16. Carole E. Barrowman’s Authorial Journey to Hollow Earth (Features)
  17. Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt (Columns)
  18. Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV (Reviews)
  19. The Gay Ole Countryside (Columns)
  20. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Reviews)
  21. Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Reviews)
  22. “Don’t Let Me Fall”: Hip-Hop in the Age of Austerity (Features)
  23. Counterbalance No. 67: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' (Sound Affects)
  24. 'Namath': Broadway Joe Looks Back (Reviews)
  25. A Tale of How Great Journalism Became Revisionist History: Grambling State U Football (Columns)
  26. Chairlift: Something (Reviews)
  27. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - "Heart Attack" (Cosmic Kids Remix) (PopMatters Premiere) (Mixed Media)
  28. The 10 Best John Coltrane Solos (Sound Affects)
  29. A Look to the Past, An Insight Into the Present: The Use of Gender in 'Mad Men' (Features)
  30. The Barbaric (and Poetic) Yawp of Shelby Lynne (Notes from the Road)
PM Picks
Music Archive
Announcements

© 1999-2012 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters.com™ and PopMatters™ are trademarks
of PopMatters Media, Inc.

PopMatters is wholly independently owned and operated.
PopMatters is a member of BUZZMEDIA Music, MOG and Guardian Select.