For years, I've had this horrible habit. I miss important concerts. It usually happens in one of three ways:

1) I'm just uninformed or lazy.
Example: I skipped Neutral Milk Hotel in 1997 because I'd only heard one track from the album on the local college radio station ("Song Against Sex") and didn't feel like going through all the trouble of setting the VCR to record The X-Files (yeah, yeah).

2) I see bands that later become favorites of mine, but because I'm not aware of their brilliance at the time, I pay no attention.
Example: In 1992, I was fortunate enough to be in attendance at show featuring the Flaming Lips and Throwing Muses. I spent the entirety of both bands' performances at the bar drinking, and ignoring the supremely good music being performed on stage.

3) Things just go wrong.
Examples: The car broke down before the last Godspeed You Black Emperor show; I misread the date for the Magnetic Fields concert.

It's almost as if Rocktzlcoatl, the evil god of music, is punishing me for that year I spent listening to nothing but ska. This terrible habit eventually got out of control enough to become a new year's resolution this year: eat better, exercise more, and don't miss shows. I swear, it's written down.

But this time, I've got the advantage. I know for a fact that I haven't missed Migala, because they haven't toured the U.S. yet. (That's right, Rocktzlcoatl-- eat it.) Even if I'd seen Migala in their native Spain opening for the Magnetic Fields, Damon and Naomi, and Smog, or when they were backing Will Oldham on his Spanish tour, I doubt even I could have been oblivious. Migala don't play forgettable music.

Arde, the third album by this Madritian sextet, is nothing short of elemental in its beauty. Strings, accordions, woodwinds, snatches of television dialogue, sound effects, noise effects, shattering glass from auto accidents, and ambient cooing are all piled on a pilaf of Spanish-tinged folk. It's half instrumental, and half sung in English. The heavily accented vocals of Abel Hernandez imbue Migala's lyrics with a lazy, seemingly effortless poeticism ("Was at night so violently cold/ We thought the wind was howling for us"). Recurring themes appear in both musical phrases and lyrical imagery. The underlying content dwells on disaster as prerogative; it comes off as deeply contemplative without bowing to pretension. It's ambitious, and what's more, it's successful.

"Primera Parada" opens the disc, a traditional Spanish song reminiscent of Los Lobos' "Rio de Tenampa," but with more grandiose cymbal flourishes. The second track, "El Caballo del Mal," takes a Calexico-style spaghetti western soundtrack base and adds embellishments like dancing vibes, swirling white noise and a soft, fingerpicked outro. I'm already sold, even before the first syllable is sung.

Vocalist Abel Hernandez's Leonard Cohen-like, measured croon appears for the first time in "Fortune's Show of Our Last." Halfway through, the song abandons its straightforward melody in favor of sound collage. But even after the music is buried under layers of feedback and noise, the faintest hint of the original melody is evident, like an outline of a fossil suggested in rock strata. In "Last Fool Around" and "Suburban Empty Movie Theatre," Migala evokes early Velvet Underground in their rhythms and song structures but displays a more layered approach to song-building.

At their darkest ("La Noche"), the band dives headlong into an ambient abyss and wallows in fog-thick atmosphere. The piece feels like a soundtrack to a Wim Wenders nightmare. Two chords alternate atop a gulping bassline; ghostly, foreign words are whispered into your ear; disembodied choral-synth voices groan like Tibetan monks in the background; a loon cries out; and just before the end, we're offered a fleeting glimpse of a countermelody. It all works brilliantly, as does the album as a whole.

Another standout, "Cuatro Estaciones," builds serpentine hissing to climax and then eases down in a gentle denouement. Beginning with fast, fluid guitarwork, it then leads the listener into a swirl of ominous, minor key strings. Post-rock white noise enters as bursts of short static. It sounds like the hitching breath of the monster that lived under my bed as a child. And what makes this album mesmerizing is just that-- its ability to convey terror and beauty simultaneously. Arde is perfect music for both the darkest shadows of midnight, and the brightest glare of dawn.

-John Dark