Iasos’ music is special in many ways : the psychology department of Plymouth State College has rated one of his album the closest thing to what you can hear during a Near Death Experiences. His secret ? Iasos doesn’t create his music by himself, he claims to be getting help… from a higher-dimensional being called Vista.
I have a confession to make : I mostly listen to ambient music. These days, I’ve gone one step further by listening only to thunder storms, rains on a roof and, as of late, the sounds of the forest at night. I’m always craving to find that unique ambiance that will transport me somewhere else, down in nature or up in a strange dimension. To go places in my mind I need to go to, especially when trying to write. In a way, I use music like some people use drugs.
But when I first listened to Iasos, it was his song The Angel of comfort : I felt such a relief that I quickly forgot I was listening to music. It felt like I was listening to what silence sounds like in another dimension.
Iasos was one of the first New Age musicians. He created a music that focused more on effects and feeling rather than melodies and instruments. Along with other pioneers such as Brian Eno, Vangelis and Steven Halpern, Iasos paved the way into a genre that is probably more popular today that it was then, when his first album came out in 1975.
That album was called… Inter-Dimensional Music.
Yes, you’ve read the title right : his music is coming from other dimensions. That’s the point I wanted to know more about when I shot Iasos an email.
Theødor. I’ve read accounts of how you’ve started music, and it seemed to have been difficult at first, both because working with fellow musicians wasn’t easy and because the music that you imagined didn’t exist… yet.
Iasos. Correct. The other musicians were (of course) trying to create conventional “earth music”. And I was attempting to create a totally new type of music, not yet common on earth. So this was a frustrating and fruitless effort, until I switched to doing it myself with multi-track tape-recorders, rather than trying to create it with other musicians.