Biography:
Amulets is the solo project of Portland-based audio and visual artist Randall Taylor. Amulets employs handmade cassette tape loops and live processed guitar loops to create live, lush soundscapes and immersive drones. Through the recontextualisation of cassettes, sampling, field recording, and looping, these long-form compositions blur the genres of ambient, drone, noise, and electronic music. Amulets has steadily built a catalog defined by tactile intimacy and patient exploration. Taylor has performed across the U.S at numerous festivals and opened for such acts as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, This Will Destroy You, Covet, Midwife, and Efrim Manuel Manuck (of Godspeed You Black Emperor) to name a few. Taylor was also published in the Kim Bjorn book series “PEDAL CRUSH” as an artist and inspirational creator.
Amulets’ new album Rema(i)nders marks his debut on Pelagic Records, a fitting home for a record that thrives in the liminal space between heaviness and fragility. Deeply immersive, the album navigates the dreamy boundaries between the tangible and the ethereal, where sound behaves as memory itself: unstable, layered, and quietly transformative. Known for his ability to weave soundscapes that evoke powerful emotions with minimalistic instrumentation, Taylor’s newest project is a masterful exploration of mood, atmosphere, and texture.
Throughout Rema(i)nders, sounds recur in altered forms, dissolving and reassembling. This sense of transformation, of constantly shifting even in their stillness, speaks to Taylor’s keen understanding of how sound can evoke both a sense of permanence and transience. Throughout the ambient soundscapes is introspection, melancholy, and an almost hypnotic calm. The album resists forward motion, instead inviting the listener to linger inside its evolving textures, to sit with what’s left behind rather than rush toward resolution. Central to Amulets’ identity is Taylor’s insistence on working, quite literally, outside the box. While many contemporary experimental artists rely heavily on software, Taylor’s process remains rooted in physical interaction with sound.
This spirit of experimentation mirrors the album itself. Where soundscapes are curious, unafraid, and open to transformation. Rema(i)nders is not an album that demands attention, it earns it slowly through patience and immersion. It asks the listener to sit with ambiguity, to find beauty in erosion, and to recognize how sound, like memory, can both fade and persist at once. In a world increasingly defined by immediacy and excess, Amulets offers a quiet dynamism that is reflective and enduring.
Contact:
amuletsmusic@gmail.com
