‘Imagine creating symphonies by tuning up planets [to] create beautiful chords that echo through the galaxy’
Picture this: it’s 1970s California and new age music has just begun. The hippies are high and communes are cropping up in their hundreds. Alternative therapy is on the rise too, along with the introduction of therapy rooms, massage and yoga studios. The soundtrack to all this is mind-altering. Mirroring the move into mindful practices such as meditation through soothing tones and ethereal zone-outs designed for those eager to tune in and drop out.
Around the same time, a young artist named Iasos claims he’s hearing ‘paradise music’ in his head. He describes it as “Earth reproduction of music that exists here and now in other dimensions”, and claims that it’s being communicated to him through a trans-dimensional being called Vista. The music is ambient and spacious and as clear as crystals. “Imagine creating symphonies by tuning up planets [to] create beautiful chords that echo through the galaxy,” he later writes in the linear notes to 2013’s Celestial Soul Portrait. “That’s the game Vista is playing.”
If you’re not familiar with Iasos, chances are you’ve come across his music, or at least heard music that’s inspired by his music. He’s up there with the likes of Brian Eno, Laaraji and Vangelis as one of the electronic pioneers of new age music, having immersed himself in California’s psychedelic scene in the 70s and carving out his own DIY and experimental sound: modulated flutes, steel guitars, spacey electric pianos. The kind of high-vibrational stuff that feels familiar now, but at the time was only just beginning. There are not many musicians whose work has been studied by scientists researching near-death experiences (“The Angels of Comfort”), and picked up by NASA for its healing qualities, but Iasos was one of a kind.
Earlier this week, Iasos transcended the earthly realms at the age of 77, but his legacy lives on – his first album, Inter-Dimensional Music (1975) is still considered one of the best ambient albums of all time. From woolly counterculture to the wellness industrial complex, new age music has gone mainstream as younger generations are drawn to its healing properties. Iasos believed that music is a therapeutic force, an ethos that can be felt across the wellness industry – through sound baths, crystal healing meditations, mindfulness apps and the like. He told interviewers there was no message to his music, only “concentrated beauty patterns”: “Beauty has the effect of raising wellbeing. It’s emotionally uplifting, mentally stimulating, spiritually inspiring, and healing on the body. Beauty is healing because love is the cause, beauty is the effect.”
With everything going on in the world – rising living costs, technological accelerationism, climate change, and literal war – it’s no wonder we’re seeing new age music continue to grow in popularity. The pseudo-spirituality that was made mainstream by the hippies can be felt across the internet as people turn to the mystical to make sense of the chaotic world around them. We’ve also seen this in the psychedelics revival and the uptick in alien conspiracies – which began as fringe counterculture but is now public consumption. In this new age of digital psychedelia, Iasos’ spiritually-powered music is arguably more relevant than ever, so breathe in and out, and expand your mind.