Open your third eye! Blissed-out new age voyager’s early work compiled... Iasos – like Lawrence, first name only – is a wide-eyed 66-year-old pioneer of what was dubbed “new age” music in the mid-1970s. Born in Greece but raised in California, he is the preeminent exponent of the kind of soothing, free-flowing, broadly electronic mood pieces that rightly or wrongly are forever associated with windchimes and dreamcatchers, yet Celestial Soul Portrait presents a persuasive case for Iasos as a radical, visionary figure operating on the same wavelength as Eno or Vangelis. Crucially, what separates Iasos from his peers is his belief that since the early ’70s he has been merely externalising the ecstatic musical visions transmitted to him telepathically by a being known as Vista. “The instant that I sensed him it released a huge waterfall of love from me to him,” says Iasos from his Marin County home, where he feeds the local wild deer each morning. “The music I was hearing was very unusual, it wasn’t like any earth music. It was lovely, it was sweet, it was uplifting and happy and full of love. It was so harmonious as to be unearthly.” In Iasos’ hands, it was also naïve, sincere and, on a flute-speckled cut such as “The Winds Of Olympus”, almost jazzy. Fans of modern-day drifters Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never will coo over the pitch-shifted drone and patchouli-scented vibe of “The Royal Court Of The Goddess Vesta” and “Crystal*White*Fire*Light”, while US psychologists have stated that Iasos’ 1978 meditative masterpiece “The Angels Of Comfort”, included here, most resembles the music heard by people who’ve had near-death experiences during their near-death moments. Even Buckminster Fuller enthused over the qualities of Iasos’ “profoundly beautiful” music. Though Celestial Soul Portait focuses on the first decade of Iasos’ output, when he released cassettes on his Inter-Dimensional Music label, he’s still active today. His latest single? “Smooth Sailing Over Enchanted Lands”. “People have always said: ‘Iasos, you’re way ahead of your time.’ And so now it’s 2013, people are getting interested in music I released in 1975. Better late than never.” Piers Martin

The rocket man returns to his very best on 30th LP... Combining intimacy and extroversion, immediacy and reflection, in a way only accessible to a performer able to tweak one's tearducts whilst wearing a lavishly embroidered, gold-lamé general's costume, The Diving Board may be the best album of Elton John's entire career. Clearly reinvigorated by The Union, his 2010 collaboration with Leon Russell, Elton hooked up again with producer T-Bone Burnett for a veritable blizzard of work. In three days, he and Taupin had written eleven songs, the bulk of which were recorded virtually live in the studio in just five days with a typical T-Bone crack team designed to re-focus the star on a basic piano trio format, with the peerless Jay Bellerose bringing snap, punch and roll to the grooves, and Raphael Saadiq lacing expansive basslines through the songs. Around these core tracks, further colouration is provided by keyboardist Keefus Ciancia, Motown percussionist Jack Ashford, and Doyle Bramhall II and Burnett on guitars. It's a supple, flexible crew more than capable of bending to accommodate whatever style and emphasis is demanded from Elton's best collection of songs and stories in ages, an anthology in which threads of maturity, melancholy, sympathy and insight are braided into a strong, compelling rope that pulls the listener from the opening valediction of "Oceans Away" to the closing rumination of "The Diving Board". In the former, he adopts a smart, in places almost military, inflection to pay tribute to old soldiers haunted by fallen friends, "the ones who hold onto the ones they have to leave behind", a respectful acknowledgement of duty discharged. By contrast, the latter deals waspishly with the modern fascination with empty celebrity, a talent-show lottery culture which places its supposed winners high up on the diving board - a place from where "you see it all", but which equally exposes your every move and mistake to public gaze. With Elton's bluesy delivery tinted with subdued horns, it's Ray Charles crossed with Randy Newman. In between these poles reside a host of characters struggling to find their rightful place, their due respect, their heart's ease: from the would-be poet of "My Quicksand", long since sucked into a corrosive lifestyle, and the Depression-era dance-contestants of "The New Fever Waltz", to the blind black musician of "Ballad Of Blind Tom", using his instinctive gift to both lubricate his way through life, and bring more intangible aesthetic satisfaction. Several tracks hint back to Elton's early career, with both the dustbowl odyssey "Town Called Jubilee" and the gospel number "Take This Dirty Water" throwbacks to Tumbleweed Connection territory. Leon Russell's influence is reflected in the frisky, rumbustious R&B piano of "Mexican Vacation", while the shadow of David Ackles, an important model for the John/Taupin songwriting style, falls across "Voyeur", once considered as the album's title-track. It's a sombre work dealing with the way that we seek respite from adversity and melancholy, wars political and emotional, in the temporary solace of snatched liaisons, where "a whisper in the dark is holding more truth than a shout". Elsewhere, the jaunty country-pop plaint "Can't Stay Alone Tonight" deals in more optimistic manner with the same theme of estrangement covered in "Home Again". One of the album's highlights, the latter confronts the need to leave, and the desire to return, against a bleak piano soundscape whipped by wispy, wind-like synth noise, the homesick protagonist regretting "all this time I spent being someone else's friend". Another standout is "Oscar Wilde Gets Out", in which the writer's flight from Reading Gaol to France is borne on a compelling piano setting whose momentum evokes both furtive escape and decisive break, driven along by the restrained slap-punch of Bellerose's drums. It's also one of Taupin's best lyrics, blending regret and fond reminiscence with the bitter sting of humiliation, Wilde compared to "the head of John The Baptist in the arms of Salome". Punctuated by three piano miniatures, "Dream #1, #2 and #3", which serve as palate-cleansing sorbets between sharp changes of mood and direction, it's an impressively strong set of songs, diverse in both lyrical themes and musical styles, and delivered with a confident range of drama and empathy by a "heritage" act resolutely refusing to rest on his laurels, an artist secure in his abilities - and, yes, in his continuing relevance. Andy Gill Q&A ELTON JOHN How did these sessions work? “On the first three days of recording, in 2012, we wrote 11 songs. All the tracks on the first session were done in five days. We went back this year and Bernie wrote some additional lyrics. I chose four and they were written and recorded in two days.” You continue to work prolifically with Bernie Taupin… “The great advantage of having Bernie as a lyricist is he’s a very cinematic writer. I get a piece of paper [from him] and it has as story on it. Then I sit down at the keyboard…and because the story he’s telling affects what I’m hearing…something comes out. I don’t know what it is. It’s as exciting as it was when I wrote the first melody to his first lyric, way back in 1967." Tell me about working with T Bone Burnett. “When you’ve got musicians like these guys behind you, it’s so exciting. This was done, more or less, live. That’s the way I used to record. In the old days, with the Elton John album [1970] we were recording live with an orchestra, and I was terrified. But it’s the way to do it. And that’s the way T-Bone does it, he assembles this great group of musicians, and hence things don’t take five or six months.”

Hits, rarities and more - the two sides of The Beach Boys laid bare in extensive box set... It has been the Beach Boys’ habit to confound those ready to predict their demise. Despite functioning (or, at times, dysfunctioning) largely as a de-luxe oldies act since before the Reagan presidency, there have been occasional glimmers of creativity throughout the latter stages of their career, with perhaps the biggest surprise coming last year, when they marked their 50th anniversary not just with a 73-concert tour featuring all surviving original members but with an album of new material that was at worst tolerable and at best excellent. But there are, of course, two groups called the Beach Boys: the celestial choir that first caught the ear with the stained-glass harmonies of hits from “Surfer Girl” to “God Only Knows”, and a second outfit that emerged much later, a group whose voices (like those of The Band) came together as individual sounds, each with its own grain, rubbing against each other to create little abrasions that mirrored the internal tensions of an institution frequently riven by disputes but held together by bonds of blood and commerce. That second group began to show itself when Brian Wilson’s soaring falsetto lost its unblemished purity and Dennis Wilson, the youngest of the three brothers, stepped out from behind the drum kit with his own songs and his hoarsely compelling lead vocals. The personalities of each member came into clearer focus: they were not, after all, merely five indistinguishable versions of the same person. Their music became even more interesting, if much less predictable and consistent. As time goes by, that phenomenon becomes easier to identify and appreciate. Twenty years ago, with Dennis already 10 years in his grave, a box set titled Good Vibrations marked the group’s 30th anniversary, assembling the hits alongside a substantial quantity of rare material. Since then much has happened, notably the death from cancer of Carl Wilson in 1998, the rebirth of Brian’s public career -- symbolised by the triumphant 2004 restoration of the lost masterpiece Smile -- and the atomisation of the core group into at least three performing units. Made In California, compiled to celebrate last year’s golden jubilee, offers – in the words of Mike Love – “a window into all the various eras of the Beach Boys and a peek into things that were less well known or simply unreleased.” Inevitably depleted by previous raids, the vault of unseen treasure will nevertheless continue to yield gems and new perspectives for a few more anniversaries yet. If Mike Love’s 1979 composition “Going to the Beach” is a trifle to please only the most undeveloped palate, the many treats for the hard core include glorious acapella mixes of Sunflower’s “This Whole World” and “Slip on Through”, the sumptuous instrumental track from Glen Campbell’s “Guess I’m Dumb” (recorded during the Beach Boys Today! sessions), Dennis’s unreleased and epically yearning “(Wouldn’t It Be Nice to) Live Again”, “Don’t Worry, Baby” with an alternate (and slightly inferior) lead vocal, three excellent and previously unheard Phil Spector covers -- “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” (with Brian’s lead vocal) from the Beach Boys Love You sessions in 1976, Carl singing “Da Doo Ron Ron” from 1979 and Brian and Mike duetting on “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in Love” from 1980 – and excellent unreleased versions of “Soul Searchin’” and “You’re Still a Mystery”, produced by Brian, Andy Paley and Don Was in 1995. A selection of live tracks is highlighted by three songs -- “Wendy”, “When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)” and “Hushabye” -- recorded at the BBC in 1964, during their first UK visit, and by an exquisite version of “Only With You” from Carnegie Hall in 1972, just prior to the release of Holland, with Carl and Dennis sharing the lead on what may be the loveliest of all the group’s songs. The hits are here, of course, from “Surfin’” in 1962 to “Kokomo” in 1988, but some of their most startling material has always been found down the back of the sofa, among such relatively unconsidered trifles as “In The Back of My Mind” (from The Beach Boys Today!), with its still-astonishing orchestral arrangement, and “Angel Come Home”, a song written by Carl with his occasional collaborator Geoffrey Cushing-Murray, sung by Dennis and left to languish on the 1979 collection titled L.A. (Light Album). In those two songs, recorded 15 years apart, the second of the two bands called the Beach Boys stands revealed: one capable of the most beautifully textured and exquisitely pain-racked white soul music ever made. Richard Williams Q&A MIKE LOVE Did you come across any nice surprises as you went through the archives? There’s a song called “Going to the Beach”. I wrote it and we all recorded around the time we were doing the Keeping the Summer Alive album, maybe it was 1979 -- and I’d forgotten all about it. Here it surfaces, and I’ll be darned if it isn’t a great song. It kind of harks back to the old “Surfin’ USA” days. We’re doing it on our concerts these days, in the encore section. Looking back at the 50th anniversary tour and album, what are your thoughts? What the anniversary established was a couple of things. One, that we can get in the studio together and still sound great. Listening to the songs coming back through the speakers, with all the harmonies and so on, it kind of harked back to the mid-60s. Both Brian and I remarked on that. It was kind of like sonic déjà vu. In terms of the shows we did, there were originally scheduled to be 50, but it actually expanded to more like 73. That was done by agreement that we would all put aside our individual pursuits and do this fixed number of shows. It was a really good thing to have done, and now we’re back on our merry way. Could it happen again, on tour or in the studio? I don’t really know. I know they’ve announced that Brian is working on a solo album. He may have two or three projects he’s working on, so he’s pretty busy. As far as getting together like that again, it remains to be seen. I would like to write songs with my cousin Brian. I’d be up for doing that. I’ll leave it there. INTERVIEW: RICHARD WILLIAMS