Pioneering electronics produce synthesised fanfares that serenade, name check The Balearic Isles, and pay tribute to Formentera’s sunsets – Ibiza’s, then, even more unspoilt neighbour. Effects mimic the elements, dolphin and whale song. Shimmering sonic streams, rivers, and waterfalls paint pictures of an aural Eden-like landscape. Something its performer / composer, the “giggle energy” guy, described first as “Paradise” and then “Inter-Dimensional” music.* 

Travelling in parallel to German “kosmische” groups, such as Between, weaving cascading keys, woodwinds, and wordless harmonies into an ecstatic jazz tapestry, this key figure in California’s new age scene, sometimes comes on like Alice Coltrane jamming with Laraaji on E. 

At others, strings are stretched into a Tangerine Dream-like void. Their very human warmth, a growing glow in the inner / outer space. Double-necked slide guitar arcs accompany repetitive reed riffs. The results, hypnotic, tranquil, trippy. Organs emit a holy, hymn-like drone. The listener, always, rapt in waves of wellbeing. Rays of divine light. 

Machines mimic ethereal, celestial, choirs, in swells surrounded by glittering glissandos. Serene symphonic melodies, sail, surf. Soar. Soothing and reassuring. Summoning sunlight. Clearing cloud. Shifting in key, and intensity, as the experience deepens. Guiding the listener through a passage of peaks, plateaus, and bardos. 

The artist known as Iasos spent his whole life trying to capture, harness, the music that he heard in his head. Greek by birth, but raised in New York, classically trained in piano and flute, in the late 1960s he relocated to California, to San Francisco, Berkeley, and Sausalito. Moving through bands, and by the early `70s composing solo, inspired by the possibilities provided by an Arp Pro / DGX synth, and drawing on Debussy, Ravel, Martin Denny, and Jimi Hendrix. Iasos improvised with relatively limited kit – not much more than a compressor and Echoplex – achieving his choral effects, for example, by feeding his synths through a vocoder. He gave his instruments names – the Arp was “Heart Flame”, his MIDI “the Golden Harp”, a Yamaha DX7, “Sapphire” – and worked with some of them for over 40 years. Communicating with entities that Iasos referred to as “Vista” and “Crystal”. Directed by them to create a “music of the spheres”. 

A fresh generation of folks, myself included, discovered Iasos when, in 2013, his track Formentera Sunset Clouds was comp’d by both Psychmagik, for Leng, and Light In The Attic. This led to a retrospective, curated by L.A. legend, master of all musics healing and mediative, Carlos Nino, for The Numero Group. Iasos collaborated with Carlos, right up to his recent passing, featuring on Nino’s albums It’s All Happening!, Espacio Especial, Going Home, and Actual Presence. May Angels Of Comfort sing him to his rest.*** 

NOTES

*Iasos described his directions from Vista and Crystal as “bubbles of giggle energy”. 

**Iasos’ Inter-Dimensional Music along with Steven Halpern’s Christening For Listening, both released in 1975, are considered to be the first “new age” albums. Iasos played flute on Steven’s record.

***In the late 1980s Dr. Joel D. Funk, a professor of Psychological Development at Plymouth State University, surveyed 60 patients who had suffered near-death experiences. He played them pieces of classical and new age music, in an attempt to identify just what had soundtracked their trip toward the light. By far the majority of people chose Iasos’ Angels Of Comfort – a 30 minute Arp String Ensemble improvisation, recorded in studio downtime, in 1978.