Amulets’ Randall Taylor Finds Catharsis on His Newest, “Not Around but Through”

Constructing a tape loop is not easy.

There’s a lot of things that can go wrong fiddling with a cassette’s plastic cogs and the delicate magnetic tape inside. Tape breaks or becomes unspooled, all your hard work might get erased entirely. But, if you’re patient and careful, you’re rewarded with a five-second bite of sound sprawling on repeat.

Tape loops form the foundation of the immense, shiver-inducing soundscapes crafted by producer and visual artist Randall Taylor, better known as Amulets. Running these loops through a four-track recorder alongside rumbling guitar melodies and textured field recordings, Taylor creates music that is more than the sum of its parts.

“How do I sound bigger than what I am?” Taylor says. “How do I sound bigger than tape loops, than guitar pedals? How do I make this sound as grand as I can imagine?”

With his first record in four years, Not Around but Through, out Feb. 21 on Beacon Sound, Taylor blends ambient and post-hardcore with a cinematic grandeur.

Taylor, easygoing with horn-rimmed glasses and a face full of scruff, is a gearhead’s gearhead, but that doesn’t mean his music is unapproachable. In fact, Taylor has made it his mission to make his music and the tech behind it accessible for everyone who’s curious. Since 2017, he’s amassed a large social media following for his videos of sound experiments and gear setups. The short reels serve as a musical journal featuring snippets softly emanating from candy-colored circuits of retro cassette decks, synthesizers, pedals and reel-to-reel tapes, blinking like sci-fi control panels. The niche videos have struck a chord. As of this writing, Taylor has garnered more than 51,000 followers.

Growing up in a rural town called Tully in central New York, Taylor remembers taking apart and reassembling gadgets just to see how they worked. It was this early obsession with technology that fed a lifelong exploration of building, deconstructing, and remaking things. On the music side, he got his start as a teenager playing guitar in emo and hardocre bands after family and friends all chipped in to buy him an Aria Pro II Stratocaster.

“It was redneck-y honestly,” he laughed. “I was this rural emo boy.”

He brought his love of nature and mechanics with him to the University of Buffalo, where he dove into the world of experimental filmmaking. This love has never really left, and last year, Taylor soundtracked the psychedelic indie horror flick Delicate Arch. He has two more scores on the way this year, including one for Adult Swim.

After a few years in Austin, Taylor found his niche in the Pacific Northwest, moving to Portland in July 2017. He’s part of a crop of Portland experimentalists—including Patricia Wolf, Crystal Quartez and Black Decelerant—who blend a reverence for nature with ambient instrumentation.

“In the spring it’s vibrant, and when it’s dark here and cloudy and rainy, it’s so moody,” Taylor says. “I think the drama really fuels my music.”

Ambient music is always about the interplay between intention and discovery. Call it a genre of happy accidents. Unlike other electronic music, which is made by painstakingly building stems and sequencing beats on a computer, Randall has found a way to merge the spontaneous discovery of drone with the physicality of playing guitar.

“In a world where everything can be very sterile and repetitive and predictable, I think using the tapes is really beautiful,” Taylor says.

Not Around but Through is an enormous record made of light, misty soundscapes and deep guitar bellows. Lead single “Myriads” is like a cathartic drive through the Columbia River Gorge, shafts of sunlight splitting the omnipresent Pacific Northwest haze. “Lowercase Letters” is another standout, featuring a mournful saxophone from Daniel Kublick that recalls the apocalyptic dirges from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s landmark F#A#∞. In the wake of some personal struggles, including a creative conflict with his previous record label and estrangement from his father, completing Not Around but Through was a true labor of love.

“It’s very much a journey of my reflections on myself, through some childhood trauma,” Taylor says. “Just the overall journey of acceptance.”

A loop can often create the sense of being trapped: a sound that has no end, a bad habit that can’t be broken. Not Around but Through is just the opposite. It’s all contemplation and catharsis. It’s the sound of someone ending the cycle and beginning again.

SEE IT: Amulets perform at Show Bar, 1300 SE Stark St., revolutionhall.com. 7 pm Wednesday, Feb. 19. $15. 21+.