GRIP
GRIP

Emil Amos

of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne, Drifters Sympathy

Introduce yourself briefly, what kind of music do you make and what is your role in these different projects?

Holy Sons is a home-recording project I started in 1992, Grails is an experimental band we started around 2000, I joined Om in 2008, Lilacs and Champagne is an instrumental hip-hop band began around 2012, and my podcast Drifter's Sympathy began in 2016.

How did you originally become involved in making music? I have understood you grew up in North Carolina but lived in Portland and New York too. How have the different surroundings shaped the art you make?

Being a true small town kid definitely shaped me in the beginning. The real world seemed very far away and yet, as a kid, your brain chemistry tells you that you're at the center of the universe. Some people seem to see their life as an epic film unfolding and others just don't think their life matters much at all. When I was a kid it was the 1980's and the 'hero's journey' in films at that time sold us all on the concept that one little kid would save the world alone (Neverending Story, ET, Wargames, Karate Kid). I think I was sort of molded but scarred by that idealism as a kid and I probably believed my life would unfold in some grand, Hollywood sense. For better or worse, that's the formative time where you develop a 'vision' for yourself and I saw music/art as the place where I could make big statements, without too much worry of pretention. And then by the time I got to Portland I was 22 and I had to pull up my pants and make that dream real. So then the dream began to die and reality had to somehow take its place... a very dicey and awkward transition.

What drives you to make the art that you do?

On any different day, it could be one of a thousand states of mind. Most music is generally confined within a pretty narrow representation of the various states of mind that can be turned inside out and exposed. Centrally though, Anger is a crucial transformative device that can get us up off the floor, where we were paralyzed or feeling sorry for ourselves, and get us to do something about our sadness. Obviously, I mean a more constructive anger instead of the kind that tends to erode us from the inside. I've had trouble discerning the difference between those two kinds of anger in my life, but in art I can put any form of it to use in a way that hurts no one and helps me navigate to a place of strength.

How do you balance between the recording process and live performing? Does either play a bigger part?

I grew up as a kid obsessed with records primarily. Live shows acted as a congregation for the people who were inside the tiny movements that we made so much out of... and shows were emotionally important in that way. Being in the same room with the person I was learning so much from musically was a heavy thing. But in the end, records are the place where we put down the permanent IDEA in its ultimate form generally. I'm not really sure that the human mind can retain enough from a live show to then live off of those fumes forever. But when we form a relationship with a record, that can last for the rest of our lives and we can revisit the thing and wrestle with what it means to us for decades.

GRIP

Photo by Casey Proctor.

GRIP

Photo by Casey Proctor.

What is going on with your projects at the moment / do you have some future plans?

Grails, Om, Holy Sons and Lilacs all have records that are either being manufactured at the moment or in the mixing phase. Work is the only thing I really understand.

What would you name as the biggest highlights or hardships in your musical history?

The real hardships all existed within the beginning of my musical life. I didn't know if anything I made would ever be heard. And that was compounded by not knowing how long I'd live or if I belonged on earth at all. Now that I'm past the hardest times, they've become their own kind of 'highlight' in a strange way because I can kind of safely look back over the film of my life. It turned out that l'm not the kind of person that really cares to celebrate victories or gets very excited when things go right in general. The thing I really live for is new ideas... and new ideas tend to create the hurdles that are part of what makes life more difficult, but ultimately worth it.

I have understood you have some history with skateboarding. What kind of a mark has that left on you?

Skateboarding will always be at the core of how I approach drums for Om and Grails. To me, it's virtually the same way my body and brain meet at a kind of nexus of will-power and creativity. Playing a beat is kind of like pushing along on a board and playing a fill is essentially just doing a trick and trying to land it.

Last words of wisdom?

Don't wait to do anything. There's no reason to prepare... just make and do everything you can theorize with the same energy you may've used to defeat yourself. Both skateboarding and art teach you the true value of your independence early on and that's why people return to these practices as a religion over and over again.

↑

Emil Amos

of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne, Drifters Sympathy

GRIP

Photo by Casey Proctor.

Introduce yourself briefly, what kind of music do you make and what is your role in these different projects?

Holy Sons is a home-recording project I started in 1992, Grails is an experimental band we started around 2000, I joined Om in 2008, Lilacs and Champagne is an instrumental hip-hop band began around 2012, and my podcast Drifter's Sympathy began in 2016.

How did you originally become involved in making music? I have understood you grew up in North Carolina but lived in Portland and New York too. How have the different surroundings shaped the art you make?

Being a true small town kid definitely shaped me in the beginning. The real world seemed very far away and yet, as a kid, your brain chemistry tells you that you're at the center of the universe. Some people seem to see their life as an epic film unfolding and others just don't think their life matters much at all. When I was a kid it was the 1980's and the 'hero's journey' in films at that time sold us all on the concept that one little kid would save the world alone (Neverending Story, ET, Wargames, Karate Kid). I think I was sort of molded but scarred by that idealism as a kid and I probably believed my life would unfold in some grand, Hollywood sense. For better or worse, that's the formative time where you develop a 'vision' for yourself and I saw music/art as the place where I could make big statements, without too much worry of pretention. And then by the time I got to Portland I was 22 and I had to pull up my pants and make that dream real. So then the dream began to die and reality had to somehow take its place... a very dicey and awkward transition.

What drives you to make the art that you do?

On any different day, it could be one of a thousand states of mind. Most music is generally confined within a pretty narrow representation of the various states of mind that can be turned inside out and exposed. Centrally though, Anger is a crucial transformative device that can get us up off the floor, where we were paralyzed or feeling sorry for ourselves, and get us to do something about our sadness. Obviously, I mean a more constructive anger instead of the kind that tends to erode us from the inside. I've had trouble discerning the difference between those two kinds of anger in my life, but in art I can put any form of it to use in a way that hurts no one and helps me navigate to a place of strength.

How do you balance between the recording process and live performing? Does either play a bigger part?

I grew up as a kid obsessed with records primarily. Live shows acted as a congregation for the people who were inside the tiny movements that we made so much out of... and shows were emotionally important in that way. Being in the same room with the person I was learning so much from musically was a heavy thing. But in the end, records are the place where we put down the permanent IDEA in its ultimate form generally. I'm not really sure that the human mind can retain enough from a live show to then live off of those fumes forever. But when we form a relationship with a record, that can last for the rest of our lives and we can revisit the thing and wrestle with what it means to us for decades.

GRIP

Photo by Casey Proctor.

What is going on with your projects at the moment / do you have some future plans?

Grails, Om, Holy Sons and Lilacs all have records that are either being manufactured at the moment or in the mixing phase. Work is the only thing I really understand.

What would you name as the biggest highlights or hardships in your musical history?

The real hardships all existed within the beginning of my musical life. I didn't know if anything I made would ever be heard. And that was compounded by not knowing how long I'd live or if I belonged on earth at all. Now that I'm past the hardest times, they've become their own kind of 'highlight' in a strange way because I can kind of safely look back over the film of my life. It turned out that l'm not the kind of person that really cares to celebrate victories or gets very excited when things go right in general. The thing I really live for is new ideas... and new ideas tend to create the hurdles that are part of what makes life more difficult, but ultimately worth it.

I have understood you have some history with skateboarding. What kind of a mark has that left on you?

Skateboarding will always be at the core of how I approach drums for Om and Grails. To me, it's virtually the same way my body and brain meet at a kind of nexus of will-power and creativity. Playing a beat is kind of like pushing along on a board and playing a fill is essentially just doing a trick and trying to land it.

Last words of wisdom?

Don't wait to do anything. There's no reason to prepare... just make and do everything you can theorize with the same energy you may've used to defeat yourself. Both skateboarding and art teach you the true value of your independence early on and that's why people return to these practices as a religion over and over again.

↑