In the summer of 2020, I was flashbanged, chased, and screamed at by the Portland Police, marching not far from my own neighborhood. The experience left me reeling, having trouble sleeping, and, for a while, I had a hard time processing music like I normally would. In this time, I started listening to ambient music on repeat; Crystal Quartez, Marcus Fischer, and Amulets became the soundtrack for my weeks.
It was a chaotic time. The quarantine lockdown was only a few months old, and after the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, protests demanding justice and racial equity filled streets across the country. For Randall Taylor, the artist behind Amulets, it was also a moment of personal upheaval. This was the backdrop of Amulets’ new album, Blooming.
Blooming is an interesting and complicated album. Tonally, it feels darker than previous work by Amulets. The first track, also titled “Blooming,” enlists heavy, pounding guitars that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Holy Fawn or Planning For Burial album. It firmly announces that we’re hearing something new and different. What sounds like distorted screams roar under a sparkling soundscape punctuated by the songs of birds. It’s emotional, it’s heavy, but as its title implies, there’s also a sense of rebirth and hope to it.
The long, beautiful droning textures underpinning “New Normal” create a sense of anxiety and waiting – through the morphing unending tones, you are left wondering what comes next. Strings enter, and with them a feeling of sadness. The layered textures create a sense of loss at what came before as we settle into the wait.
When the pandemic started, I was living alone in a studio apartment. From March until October, I didn’t have any in-person conversations – no human contact that wasn’t mediated by a screen or a pair of headphones. I had all the time in the world, but a complete inability to focus or concentrate on anything. An endless holding pattern – waiting for some unseeable end to this isolation.
In “Heaviest Wait,” Amulets continues the heavier tone of “Blooming.” Growling bass that would be at home in a Ben Frost composition underpins the track, creating a seething feeling that plays against the soft twinkling guitars that float over the top of them. It feels like anger and anxious hope – maybe something will give, maybe change will come, but in the meantime all that can be done is to wait.
A few weeks into the pandemic, I started to get hopeful that this crisis would spark some mass change. Unemployment was skyrocketing and it was clear that there were no real safety nets to help people through the crisis. People finally were seeing what essential work was – what would we do without the grocer? Without the delivery driver? The farm worker? Jobs that were treated as low wage and low skill were finally seen as the piece of critical infrastructure they were. Maybe, I thought, we would see the failings of our system and through some mass political awakening we would restructure ourselves into a more fair and more thoughtful society.
“Tears in the Fabric” is testing the waters, putting one foot in front of the other, searching for solid ground as it moves forward. Slowly intensifying drones, distorted bass, and sweeping guitar march into destruction as the song builds. Repeating mechanical sounds rip at the fabric of the track, until it gives way back to that searching, careful feeling.
I feel like I barely remember life before the pandemic. I can think back to going to shows, sitting in a movie theater, seeing my friends, but it all feels fuzzy and unreal. Even with the vaccine in my arm, it’s hard to imagine ever doing the things I did before. What does it feel like to be in a room with 200 other people now? What does it feel like to give a friend a hug? How terrifying will intimacy be after COVID killed more than 2,400 people in Oregon, 561,000 people in the US, nearly 3,000,000 world wide?
The textures of “Collapse in Memory” feel like they’ve lost sight of the hopefulness of some of the earlier tracks. The reversed, repeating tones feel like they’re reaching out and grasping for something, but it’s slipping through their fingers. Deep drones create a baseline of anxiety in this reaching tone. These tones build, and as the track moves towards its conclusion, are supported by a building, distorting texture, wavering left and right through stereo space. Like the previous track, it is pulling apart at the seams, but this time there’s no release back to some earlier feeling – the distortion tears you straight to the end.
Blooming is filled with beautiful and masterful compositions that, for me, really capture the feelings of the year. Anxiety, anger, sadness, a deep collective and repeating trauma that, for a long time, had no end in sight. Through the use of looping textures, drones, strings, and guitar, Amulets creates a soundtrack for one of the worst years of the 21st century.
Blooming was released on April 2, 2021 on The Flenser. You can find it on Bandcamp, or on The Flenser's website. You can also find our recent interview of Amulets here.