The Eternal Embrace

If you meditate with this album, follow the voices - you are going to go someplace remarkable. Few albums can offer that kind of gift. Eternal Embrace will give you wings. I also use this album to enhance creativity. I usually work in silence because almost everything is a distraction (I'm a writer & artist). However, in a slump I played Baird Hersey & Prana's Eternal Embrace and found it really engaging. My muse loves their music, and I'm pleased to be able to play it during my working hours. Quite a switch from the silence...adds a welcomed color and dimension to my work. Highly recommended.

I just found this sweet, gorgeous music, I loved it, bought about a half an hour's worth, and have been listening to it every day. A group of singers with crystalline voices and a meditative intent, their sound will just wash around and through you in the most pleasant and mesmerizing way. For those familiar with and the overtone singing of Glen Velez and David Hykes, the songs without words of Meredith Monk and others, will be something close to overjoyed to hear these people's take on this use of the human voice. It immediately brought to mind a passage in one of my all-time favorite books about music, by Hazrat Inayat Kkan, from 100 years ago. (I'm not a Sufi myself, but this is still some of the deepest writing about music that I've ever encountered.) "In the Near East, among Orthodox Christians and among Armenians, there is a custom not to use an organ in the church; they use a chord or sound made by ten or twelve persons sitting there with closed lips. Anyone who has heard it, will say that they are right. The sound of the organ is most artificial in comparison with the sound that the voices of ten or twelve persons produce with closed lips." "This has such a wonderfully magic effect, it reaches so far and so deeply into the heart of man, and it produces such a religious atmosphere among them, that one feels that there is no necessity for an organ: this is a natural organ which God had made." (Hersey and Prana do their singing with mouths open, of course, but you get the idea.) Some further excerpts from The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Kkan: rosswriting.com/Warblehead/InayatKhan_onMusic-excerpts.htm - Bill Ross, of "The Warblehead Union" on iTunes

I'm a writer that spends a great deal of time alone in a room, and there are lots of times when melodic music doesn't fill the bill. At other times, when in meditation and seeking silence in an otherwise noisy world, I need something to cover the click and rattle and buzz we bring to the world. This group is clearly in touch with something when they're together. Wonderful silence in the form of aum Gary in Tampa, Florida

I have really enjoyed this album. This is great to chill out to at the office when things get a little stressful. Also a great album if you need some easy backround music to relax to.

THE VOICES The age old sacred music of Tibetan Buddhist multiphonic chant and Tuvan throat singing are the roots from which PRANA's sound has grown. The technique of these ancient vocalizations is to shape the mouth and throat into a sympathetic resonating chamber for the voice. This produces a second beautiful high whistling harmonic or overtone. PRANA's singer use their regular singing voice instead of the low gravely drone characteristic of the Tibetan's and Tuvan's sound. They apply the fundamental overtone techniques of these older traditions to the "natural voice" to sing two mellifluous pitches at once. Singing as a group in this unique style they create beautiful rising harmonies, shimmering vocal textures, and high arcing melodies. THE MUSIC More than 2000 years ago Patanjali, a sage in India said "Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind". In his work, the Yogasutras, he offers the precepts for the practice of yoga through it's Eight Limbs: 1. External self restraint, 2. Internal discipline, 3. Postures, 4. Breath control, 5. Withdrawal of the senses, 6. Concentration, 7. Meditation, 8. Complete Union. The object of the eight limbed path is to lead us to stillness of the mind. "The Eternal Embrace" is a musical meditation on the Eight Limbs of Yoga. It is a suite of pieces to find a deeper understanding of the meaning of each limbs through pure sound. The twelve pieces are sung by the unaccompanied voices of Prana without text. Instead they use the perfection of harmonic intervals to bring the listener limb by limb to a deeper state of relaxation and peace.