Background: Owen and I were driving around talking about how music journalists (and 'bl*ggers') tend to grab onto one or two items from a record's PR one-sheet and repeat it ad-nauseum. Usually, it's something that has nothing to do with the music. (For Owen, that thing was "film-school dropout".) I was having a horrible time coming up with PR material for "Right Rock" that didn't embarrass or cause me to hate music all together, and Owen suggested opening with that time-tested first-line copout: "Webster's defines ______ as:". What follows is a fool-hardy attempt to make journalists feel stupid, while still stay true to the spirit of the record. This is, (obviously), a bad way to promote a record by an unkown band, especially to people that speak English as a second language:

"Webster's defines Magical as: "produced by or as if by magic" and also "mysteriously enchanting." Pretty exciting stuff! Tyson Torstensen, 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. Torstensen 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

/BACK