This companion-album crafted by Amulets and Bus Gas is built upon a sense of unavoidable cause and effect. Ashes after a fire. Thunder before a storm. Quiet after a snow. The two cassettes are meant to be played in either order, two halves of a whole, combining together into a before-and-after rumination on anxiety and uncertainty. The bass lines on Bus Gas’ Immortal Yeller bend and warp, refusing to stay on their prescribed note while the guitars sound less like tools of rock-n-roll bravado and more like sirens at constant alarm. Mechanical rattles and clatters echo wordlessly through the din of Amulet’s Mountains Past, rumbling underneath hazy orchestras of synthesizers and tape loops. The two Portland based drone artists have both separately examined the emotional nostalgia of texture and physicality in their music, so it seems only inevitable that they would eventually join forces for the most immediate and potent collection of music they’ve yet put to tape.

Bus Gas’ and Amulets’ collaborative, two-halves-of-a-whole mindset is carried into their release’s extravagant packaging. Two clear pro-dubbed tapes are housed side by side in an oversized double cassette case. A die-cut window in the stark white j-card reveals a collection of boldly patterned die-cut inserts that can be rearranged and combined into a recursive, layered image of the listener’s own creation.