NTHNL (Jacob Rudin) Interview #2 - The Final on Vinyl Podcast

Jacob is always an interesting conversation, and his music is more so!

We talked about his most recent release What Kind of World Is This and the separation of good and evil.

Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck

Transcript

Speaker 0:14

Hi everybody, this is Keith MuzikMan Hannaleck with the Final on Vinyl Podcast. And today we are with Jacob Rudin, who goes by the artist name of NTHNL. And he just released an album on February 4th called What Kind of World Is This? And I had the pleasure of hearing that, and the review will be going up soon. Welcome back, Jacob. Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. I'm glad you're here too. So I found your album uh very eclectic and definitely a message there right from the get-go. Uh what kind of world is this? It's a question I ask myself every day lately. Yeah, right. And uh what you might want to tell people uh before we go any further is what does N T H N L stand for? Uh it is actually Nathaniel, um with no vowels. So you could just say Nathaniel. Perfect. Okay. So let's talk about the album. Uh, you know, what were some of your inspirations and um what was the decision did to come over so eclectic and different than from your previous recordings that I've heard heard. I can't talk today. Um like yeah. So I I guess I had I I've been doing this kind of cosmic flute series of albums for you know the past like seven years, and uh I've I made two and then I kind of wanted the third one to be like an evil one. Um so I started working on that, and the subject matter material was pretty dark, but I was also working on stuff that I felt was kind of in my usual kind of like exuberant, joyous, you know, brand. Um I felt like th there were two kind of distinct sound worlds happening, and by the time I realized that I was working on an album, which for me happens like once I've made enough material that it feels like a body of work, I had these two different worlds, and I thought about how I could unify them, and so I came up with this idea, what kind of world is this, which is also a feature film, um which I made over the past year to accompany the album. I didn't know that. Alright. Yeah. Um yeah, the idea was sort of, you know, kind of a hero's journey. You have the two worlds, you have kind of the mundane world, which is the happier, more exuberant self, and then there's a a journey to the underworld, which is the whole middle of the album, a little bit darker. Um yeah, a little more like frenetic. And then there's a return at the end. Right. It's definitely a storyline. Must have been hard for you to put all that together, you know, looking at all the different types of music uh that you brought into it. It's uh I I would call it contemporary ambient instrumental jazz, and that equates to fusion to me. I mean, what do you think? Cool? What would you call it? Uh I would call it all those things as well. Um yeah, I I think fusion's cool. I I guess I'd still umbrella it. I I put it under um cosmic flute music. It's just what I call it. But uh yeah, I think fusion is is appropriate. The flute is such a beautiful instrument. Um, you know, we've heard it over the years used in many different ways, and and the one thing that comes to my mind right away is Jeff O'Tull on how they implemented it into their music, starting off as a blues band. Pretty progressive and and uh I would say unique, definitely. And I think what you do is quite unique as well. So thank you. Um yeah, I guess uh you know his biggest influ inspiration on flute was um Rashad Roland Kirk, the the great blind wind player, really like eccentric kind of jazz blues player. Right, Roland Kirk, oh yeah. And I guess I yeah, I I would count him as a big big inspiration for sure. Any other inspirations, you know, while spitting records over the years that you've been inspired by most recently, would you say? Uh new music or just anything? Anything, yeah. Um let's see, I I I mean I've been a big Farrell Sanders fan forever. Um in in that whole genre. I guess you'd call it spiritual jazz. Uh Joy Gidry uh is an artist who's working right now. She's fantastic. She's kinda in that vein, she plays bassoon. Uh let's see, who else? Um there's this Norwegian saxophonist named Bendik Giska who does like long form circular breathing, minimalist stuff, very beautiful. Um yeah, I guess there's there's a lot. Um there's uh Shabaka Hutchins who is a multi-wind player now who I think is fantastic, and yeah, he he was responsible for a lot of the win playing on Andre 3000's album. Oh, okay. The uh the the one that came out recently, I forget what it's called, but it's the his flute album when he stopped being a rapper. Now, as far as you're concerned, um besides your website, what other platforms are you using to get your music out there? Spotify, Bandcamp, any of those? Oh yeah.

unknown 6:41

Yeah.

Speaker 6:42

Yeah, I'm I'm on everything. Um yeah, definitely on everything. Instagram, you name it. Seems like Bandcamp is a lot more fair than you know, stream services like Spotify, from what I'm seeing. You know, I mean a lot of the money goes to the artists on Bandcamp. Is that a fact? Or oh yeah. Bandcamp is awesome. And Spotify is evil. But there you go. Uh yeah. Um Spotify does offer like the best opportunities for people to actually hear your music because most people are on it. Um so it's this yeah, you kind of have to make a deal with the devil when you're on there because they're gunning the music industry and you know, they're gonna be like behind converting everything into AI crap. Um but at the same time, they're kind of the only way to reach like a really mass audience. Yeah. They hold the cards now. It's like they're the big boss, they're the big label boss now that like you would have back in the days of Payola in the 70s or 60s, right? Kind of morphed into that, right? You know, the other day I was looking at Bandcamp and they said they sold like 12,000 um pieces of vinyl one day. Isn't that crazy? That is awesome. Isn't that great? Really? I love it. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love vinyl. Are you still are you still buying vinyl? Uh I don't buy no. No, I don't I don't have the space or the or the budget for it right now. But I I hope I will one day, I hope. So you have your own home studio? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, for the gearheads out there, can you talk a little bit about that, what you're using to create your music? Yeah, totally. Um, let's see. Uh I I play, I guess, a lot of I I played most of the instruments on the album, so you know, guitar, uh all the winds, I did the drum programming, which I use uh Ableton for. I do all my production in Ableton. Um there were some synths there. I have like a small modular rig that I mostly use for film scoring work and uh my ambient music. Um but it made an appearance there. Uh the yeah, some synths. I I guess I was using a Moe Minotaur for the bass lines, some of the bass lines. The coolest piece of gear on the album is a vintage EWE from the 80s.

unknown 9:31

Oh.

Speaker 9:32

Which is like a yeah, it's like a rack unit. It's the Ewi 3020 and it's fully analog. So it's like you're playing an analog synthesizer. The opening notes of the album are on that instrument. And it just it sounds incredible. I mean, it's like you're you're really like playing electricity, is how it feels. Oh, that sounds interesting. I just brought you up on Bandcamp. What a crazy cover! Woo! That's definitely evil. Yeah, right. Yeah, the villain. The villain from the movie. I'll grab that cover and I'll put the Bandcamp stream on your uh review when I put it up with the interview. I definitely prefer to use Bandcamp other than Spotify. I'm just hearing so many negative things about Spotify, you know. I have used it a lot over the years, um, but I would prefer to use Bandcamp, that's for sure. I think that's great. Yeah, I feel the same. If I can direct people to Bandcamp, I always prefer that, but I find that it's kind of a tough, a tough one. Most people just stream. Yeah. Well, Viola has really been a huge comeback over the last three or four years. It just keeps growing and growing. Really? What I'm wondering, oh yeah, it's it's totally outsold um CDs in the past two or three years, I believe. Yeah, it just keeps growing. Cool. I would love to see you put some of your work out on vinyl, especially the new one. Is there any chance of that happening? I hope so. I mean, it's up to my label, and they haven't really expressed interest. I guess if I if I could get a certain amount of pre-orders or like people pledging to pre-order, then I could convince them to do it. Well then you can get that set up then, right? Yeah, I gotta get it moving. I'll talk to them about it. Oh, keep me posted. I would love to get you on my my vinyl review site as well. Cool. That would be awesome. Double shot, right? Yeah, totally. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I would love that. So you mentioned the label. I'm looking at your band camp. Um ambient mountain house. That's the master one. Ums. Young Bloods? Mm-hmm. Okay. Alright. Yeah, they're making sure uh here in New York. They have a a lot of really cool artists on their label, on their roster. Yeah. And they're really nice guys. So yeah. Is that your first label? Uh yeah. That's my first label. I I released one thing with them before. Um but yeah. What what attracted you to them at first? Excuse me. Uh they were so the the first release I did with them was the um Movement in the Tunnel music, which was an album of like kind of neoclassical music recorded in train tunnels around New York City. Is that right? That is so cool. Yeah, thank you. Oh wow. So they were must have been incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. It was really special. Um so they were willing to kind of, you know, fund that and were really excited about it. And I like that they you know just want to make cool stuff and aren't really financially motivated or yeah, motivated by clout or anything like that. That's good. That's you know, that's a good selling point for any artist because I would think being a recording artist in any generation, you have to have your guard up. You have to be careful. Uh you know, be very selective who you bring into your circle and who you can trust, right? Totally. Yeah.

unknown 13:50

Yeah.

Speaker 13:51

Well, I'm glad we glad we connected again, Jacob. Um, just to reiterate to people out there, uh Jacob Utam, who goes by Nathaniel N T H N L, it's all in caps, has a new album called What Kind of World Is This? And it's on Bandcamp and Spotify. And uh I would highly recommend giving a listen, supporting this artist. And um as far as recordings, how many do you have in your catalog at this point? I'd say uh maybe seven albums, six or seven? Okay, there you go. And they're all on Bandcamp, right? Mm-hmm. Beautiful. Yeah. They're all pretty different from each other, so that's even better. Lots to chew on, yeah. All right, Jacob. Thank you so much again for the opportunity to hear your great music and speak to you, and please stay in touch. Thank you so much. Same to you. You take care. Bye bye. All right, bye.