“Ontogenesis” by NTHNL (Jacob Rudin)
Album Review by New Age CD and New Age Notes Radio Staff
There was a lot of great music that was born during the pandemic in 2020. The album, “Ontogenesis” the 11-track album by NTHNL got its beginnings there and was released this year, 2024. As a way to formalize his explorations into making music to elicit feelings of peace and introspection in listeners during those stressful times and beyond, Jacob Rudin had the idea to create an album of calming, poetic, healing music using electronic binaural frequencies with performances on a variety of instruments. And so, with his friend and frequent collaborator, musician and yoga teacher, Leslie Graves, he began to create this special musical project.
They began the project with focus on the chakras and worked with musical vibrations going from the bottom of the body to the top, meeting for a few sessions in which they sketched ideas on the piano with Leslie prompting the musical ideas through certain body-related keywords and Jacob responding in sound.
Originally, this album, which had a working title of “Music of the Body,” was conceived as a meditation on and through the body. Over the course of the next year, as Jacob spent more time with the material, he realized that the album’s progression through the body should exist in time as much as in space.
The music Rudin ended up creating became this newly released album, “Ontogenesis,” which employs a technique called brainwave entrainment. This technique uses certain frequencies to sympathetically vibrate the mind, inducing it easily into meditative states.
“Ontogenesis” means “the progression of an organism from conception through death.” The idea is that as we move up the body, we move through a lifetime, from before the beginning to after the end, reflecting and accepting at every stage in order to move on and through the evolution of the soul.
What additionally makes this album different and special is that each of the tracks on the album has a corresponding visualization meditation a person can do while listening to the music. The listener can turn their focus to the music or to the given meditation or use them in tandem to amplify the experience of each to the other. This is really quite brilliant.
To give you some examples, the album begins with the very relaxing “welcome procession.” This composition can accompany a walking meditation if one so chooses, and this is the only meditation for which the eyes can be open. It is advised to start by synchronizing the breath with the walking, four paces in, six paces out or however many feels right, and lengthening the exhale, which helps settle down the nervous system. This track is designed to fortify and ground a person – a great way to begin any meditation – and the concept of determination and, perhaps, committing fully to this incarnation, can come to mind and be incorporated through both the music and the meditation.
Following is “nourishing, holding.” This is just gorgeous and so soothing with its ocean sounds, which may even be a field recording, plus soft synth. This is a track of rebirth. For the meditation part of this, while listening to the music, one lies down in the fetal position, imagining being in the womb. Breathing should be synced to the sound of the waves while one imagines oneself to be fully nourished, growing, and fresh with life and possibility, like a butterfly still in the cocoon.
Then we have “straightening, dispersing.” Here, in the meditation part of things and while listening to the music, one would sit as tall and as straight as possible, and from this upright and seated position, the listener would bring attention to the spine. Then one would visualize energy traveling up and down the spine and spreading throughout the body. The music is ultra-relaxing, energetically purposeful, effective, and beyond conducive to achieving the goals of the visualization, which truly is an all-body experience. You will have to try this for yourself.
Although there is much joy to be experienced in between, the album closes out with “return to the cloud, thank you.” Here, the listener inhales gratitude and exhales any and all remaining stuck energy and anxiety. Listeners are encouraged to thank themselves for taking the time to give themselves this meditation as well as to send love out from the crown chakra out into the world. And at the end, NTHNL/Jacob says, “Thank you for experiencing this album with me. . . “ I say, “Thank you, Jacob, for bringing this highly vibrating, beautiful healing work into the world.” It is certainly timely.
My sincere advice is to get the whole album for a completely transcendental healing journey. On its own, the music is wonderful and brings an easy sense of calm and tranquility. However, along with the brief, powerful meditations, the album becomes a profound self-healing and energetic tool for alignment or what we might call, “vibrational attunement” at its finest. These music and meditations are a gift to humanity we should all consider indulging in.
Get it here: https://linktr.ee/NTHNL
Official artist website: https://nthnlsound.com
