This is the internet home for I Hear A New World, a very small tape/CDR/record releaser & recording studio in Chicago. It is also the home for the music of Magical, Beautiful and other bands. We hope the site is not too confusing.
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Webster's defines Magical as: "produced by or as if by magic" and also "mysteriously enchanting." Pretty exciting stuff! T. Thurston, a vegetarian for two years in high school, certainly knows a thing or two about mysterious enchantment, if the three songs on the Right Rock b/w Wings In The Sky feat. Luxury Liner EP are any evidence, and they are, because he made the songs: with magic, yes, but also delay pedals in addition to regular instruments and drums, both digital and actual. I say "with magic" because how else could all those sounds be made by just one man? Beats me. In conclusion, Webster's first definition (see above) also defines Magical, Beautiful, because Mr. Thurston thinks of himself as much a producer as a songwriter and/or musician, as he painstakingly distilled each of these songs on a little multi-tracker from a single one-hour improvisation. "Who are some of your favorite producers?" I asked him, and he replied, "Lee Perry, Phil Elverum, Teo Macero, the dude from Can, J Dilla, Lloyd Barnes, Brian Eno, Matt Anderson" in a low, beguiling voice, reminiscent of a young Orson Welles. In the same conversation, he told me, wearing black pants and an orange, flowery shirt, and a fine straw hat, "The melody of 'Wings In The Sky' was based on my favorite Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan qawalli." I found this fact extremely interesting, so I changed the subject to lyrics, and he said in response to that: "I wrote everything on a weird family cruise of the Caribbean. It's about the spiritual conflicts I felt traveling on this big, ugly ship through such a beautiful ocean," he said, in a high, almost plaintively gorgeous voice, as if he were on the ship now, drinking a mojito as the ship captain guested with the on-board steel band singing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" as sun-burnt Midwesterners did the limbo and sang along like so many oceanic Bobby McFerrins. As I was lost in this little movie of my mind (I briefly attended film school in the late 1990's), Thurston snapped his fingers, and with a little "poof" and a cloud of smoke, he was gone, leaving in his absence a Magical and Beautiful melody from a neighboring fern. "Ahhhhhh", I thought, with breathless bemusement: "He's done it again!" and then with a smile, and lower in both volume and pitch: "He's done it again. Magical!"
-Owen Ashworth. May, 2008. Chicago, IL
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thing from the first album:
Ah, Music in the 21st Century. . .everything has been ridiculed and
destroyed by punk/hardcore/noise, so now everything is available at a
low, low price. What happens when a piano wiz-kid from Orange County
grows up in the midst of this cultural chaos and gets his Minor Threat mixed up with his Neil Young? Well, he might move to Chicago and take
up the life of the world-wandering musician with Head of Femur and
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and when he's not on tour he might
only half-jokingly call himself Magical, Beautiful and hide in his
basement putting together grandiosely stoned prog/pop compositions
with chewing gum and resin. You might even be holding his record in
your hands right now. . .see if you can hear a new world, or at least a
mixed-up new vision of what's left of the old one. . .
- [Larry "Fuzz-O" Dolman, January 2007]
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This interview done late summer 2007 is a pretty up-to-date bio.
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Magical, Beautiful is primarily songs written, performed and recorded/produced by:
T. Thurston
and includes/included:
Charlie Vinz (banjo/drums/melodica/bells/effects/vocals/bass/lap steel/etc.); Nick Broste (organs/trombone/mix help); Dan Browning (drums), Christopher Keener (Juno106/vocals), Sara Coffin (drums), Mike Elsener (drums/guitar), Gary James (drums/guitar/bass), Trout Blood (drums), Rene Jermal (foot percussion), Jim Fairchild (acoustic guitar), The Chancellor (drums), Alance Ward (drums), Matt Focht (drums), Colby Starck (drums).
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From allmusic.com:
Flourishes like the foot billows on "horsebreaker" and the six-part backing chorus on their version of Bjork's "cocoon" (recorded live using an antiquated reverb effect) make the self-titled album something of a rarity: a lo-fi album designed for headphones. "Magical, Beautiful" paints a portrait of a young man cocksure of himself, yet bowled over by his discovery of the world. As such, it's an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it's a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. This is as strange as mainstream pop gets, even pushing on the borders of the avant-garde. Because of its ambitions,
"obscure love" failed to replicate the success of its two predecessors (it still went double platinum, though), yet it earned a dedicated cult audience of fans of twisted, melodic pop. Like the lyrics, the arrangements are busy, but the melodies are well developed and the rhythms, pushed by drummer Vincent Lopez, are breakneck. Avant-garde yet very accessible, Here Come the Warm Jets still sounds exciting, forward-looking, and densely detailed, revealing more intricacies with every play.
The album's standout track (apparently the only holdover from an early intention to present songs with historical subjects) was the seven-and-a-half-minute epic "A New World," a commentary on the Spanish conqueror of Latin America that served as a platform for Thurston's most extensive guitar soloing since his work on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, while "Cheree" and "Girl" counter the rest of the album's hard edges with a sensuality that's at once eerie and alluring.
However, with such comparatively lesser-known but equally impressive numbers as the quietly intense romance of "Here Is the House" to boast, Black Celebration is solid through and through. Gold is likely to sound thin and unpolished to the legions of fans who made Thurston a top concert draw for his mega-hit ballads, but it's still a great snapshot of the singer/songwriter at the end of his hit-making rock and roll days as he begins his ascent into adult contemporary pop stardom. An album singing the praises of peace and quiet, Vespertine isn't merely lovely; it proves that in Thurston's hands, intimacy can be just as compelling as louder emotions.
Thurston was adored wherever he traveled and lived at a pace that would eventually catch up with him. He died of chronic fatigue, with much credit given to his lifelong health problems, in his hometown of Bergen.
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