7.
Iasos – Jeweled Space
I originally discovered Iasos on the fantastic Crystal Vibrations blog, one of my absolute favourite music blogs out there, which unfortunately hasn’t been updated in quite some time. I went on to explore him further after this initial discovery, but Jeweled Space is still the one that resonates with me the most. It’s one twenty-something minute track per side of pitchbent ambient ethereal bliss. It always sounds to me like a Mobius strip – it lifts itself higher and higher, but then, without really noticing any prominent shift, the wash of sound has somehow looped back around to its starting point and is rising yet again.
It’s magical prismatic music in the vein of new age, but with something a bit more experimental about it. I listen to lots of new age music, but I’m also very uncomfortable with the use of ‘New Age’ as a term or genre as it generally becomes misinterpreted as mere background music, or music that is meant to exist in the way a candle scents a room. I find most music that falls into this category to have quite a lot more depth than that, and I find myself completely immersed in it as not only a healing experience but also a deeply musical one. Iasos tends to be one of the deepest, and he takes it pretty far out there without fear of occasionally sounding less-than-peaceful. Perhaps we can consider him the enfant terrible of New Age.
