Iasos loves the slide guitar, which allows him to create incredible sweeps and gentle flutters. The flute, an instrument of his childhood, dances freely, creating images of satyrs crowned with laurels. (Vista isn't the only god Jesus worked with; he claims to have received a musical scale from Pan.) The piano doesn't sound real at all—it's pearly, warped, slightly too shiny, reminiscent of a piano. All these elements come together on 'Lueena Coast', the album's most striking track, which opens with scattered piano arpeggios and leaps into long flute pirouettes. Jesus' voice can be heard faintly in the background, drawing out syllables through a thick sheet of reverberation.
Birds and titles abound in its margins Dimensional Music, making Iasos' clear debut on Martin Denny's exotic records of the 1950s, which used birdsong to put American listeners in the mind of some distant tropical island. “Lanua Cove,” available only on the original vinyl pressing, centers on a distinctly Denny-like vibraphone. Although a distant, watery cymbal gives it some interest, it's easier to think of tiki bars than transcendence while listening.
“Osiris Bull-Man & Elephant Walk”, a cartoonish approach to “Ancient Egyptian” music, is the track that has aged the most. Yasu's claim that these pseudo-Arabic scales implied a connection to the time of the Pharaohs made it clear that his music was not immune to the infantile streak of exoticism that persists in the new age, rooted in the idea that non-Western cultures and spiritualities it is more in touch with some fundamental truth about the universe. It's only thanks to the soupy mixing and production that “Osiris” manages to sound a little ancient, weathered by time and dust. Once the ersatz Eastern melodies fade, it meanders into a surprisingly powerful psych-rock groove that is the only audible example of Iasos' Hendrix influence.
Dimensional Music it never really sounds like divine music. It sounds like a human approach to divine music using the limited tools at their disposal. That's what makes it undeniably cheesy at times, and also what makes it work. It's a strange thing to say about music that's so outwardly lazy, but it also has feeling urgent, as if this person did their best to transcribe the cosmic music into their mind before it flickered. The influences from Debussy and Denny, then, could be interpreted as Jesus' way of filling in the gaps. Even his stinging imitations of nature, such as the sounds of water on “The Bubble Massage” or the effects of canned birdsong throughout the album, have a surreal quality that's more eerie and alluring than a pristine recording would be. in the field.
