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Iasos loves slide guitar, which allows him to create incredible sweeps and gentle flutters. The flute, instrument of his childhood, dances freely, conjuring images of satyrs wreathed in laurels. (Vista is not the only god Iasos has worked with; he claims to have received a musical scale from Pan.) The piano does not sound real at all\u2014it\u2019s pearly, warped, slightly too lustrous, a memory of a piano. All these elements combine on \u201cLueena Coast,\u201d the album\u2019s most stunning track, which opens with scattered piano arpeggios and leaps into grand pirouettes of flute. Iasos\u2019 voice can be faintly heard in the background, mouthing syllables through a thick sheet of reverb.<\/p>\n
Avian whoops and titters abound in the margins of Inter-Dimensional Music<\/em>, making explicit Iasos\u2019 debut to Martin Denny\u2019s exotica records of the 1950s, which used birdsong to put American listeners in the mind of some faraway tropical isle. \u201cLanua Cove,\u201d available only on the original vinyl pressing, centers a conspicuously Denny-like vibraphone; though a distant, aqueous cymbal gives it some interest, it\u2019s easier to think of tiki bars than transcendence while listening.<\/p>\n \u201cOsiris Bull-Man & Elephant Walk,\u201d a cartoonish approximation of \u201cAncient Egyptian\u201d music, is the track that\u2019s aged the worst. Iasos\u2019 claim that these pseudo-Arabic scales implied a connection with the age of the pharaohs made clear his music was not immune to the infantilizing streak of exoticism that persists in new age, rooted in the idea that non-Western cultures and spiritualities are more in touch with some fundamental truth about the universe. It\u2019s only thanks to the soupy mix and production grit that \u201cOsiris\u201d actually manages to sound a bit ancient, weathered by time and dust; once the ersatz Eastern melodies fade out, it meanders its way into a surprisingly strong psych-rock groove that\u2019s the only audible instance of Iasos\u2019 influence from Hendrix.<\/p>\n Inter-Dimensional Music<\/em> doesn\u2019t ever really sound like divine music. It sounds like a human\u2019s approximation of divine music using the limited tools at their disposal. That\u2019s what makes it undeniably cheesy at times, and also what makes it work. It\u2019s a strange thing to say about music so outwardly languid, but it also feels urgent,<\/em> as if this person was doing their damnedest to transcribe the cosmic music in their mind before it flickered out. The influences from the likes of Debussy and Denny, then, could be interpreted as Iasos\u2019 way of filling in the gaps. Even his chintzy imitations of nature, like the water sounds on \u201cThe Bubble Massage\u201d or the canned birdsong effects all over the album, have a hyperreal quality that\u2019s spookier and more alluring than a pristine field recording would\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n