The long running project of tape loop maestro and sound artist Randall Taylor, Amulets is known for his ability to build low key, textured, soundscapes from tinkering with analogue bits of kit. “To remain is to remind. To remind is to remain.” is the koan like enigma Taylor offers as an explanation of the motivations for this new release and its typographically awkward title Rem(a)inders. It drifts through the melancholy space of memory, the specifics melting away and the vague echoes of past emotion remaining.
Beyond the tape loops his other main sound source is ambient guitar drones and they’re maybe making themselves a little more prominent this time, seeming to provide and loosely mark out the space in which the other elements wash in and out, and float around. The guitar is most robust on ‘Coiled’ where hefty, almost doom, chords strike in the distance behind some great saxophone from guest Patrick Shirioshi. ‘Black Sheep’ opens on atmospheric sci-fi synth drones, soft melting notes hanging in the haze as it patiently unwinds. Towards the end the track thickens to a gentle distorting peak from which the lost notes re-emerge playing slowly on piano in an empty room.
While the whole thing feels of a piece each track here has its own subtly distinct mood or feel. ‘Former Shells’ carries a small guitar twang, lost amid the ambient swirl of tones, like an echo or a half remembered tune where your mind will not continue the melody. While everything here happens in a hazy kind of space that feels slightly outside of time, ‘Slow Motion Somnia’ does magically slow things down even further, turning in a lazy circle of glowing light, like a time stretched carousel.
The final, near title track, ‘RemainRemind’ winds back up again, finding its way to something kind of squalling and hectic, at least within the context of what came before. It’s an unexpectedly uncomfortable close, shedding the calm for something a little colder, less sleepily soothing. Taylor remains a master of this sound, tape loops meshing with ambient guitar textures to conjure up evocative atmospheres, the persistent but fading, changing, space of memory.
