A begins - and continues - as a fierce storm, tightly compacted, and driven by low-mid frequencies. These central elements thunder along at a fast pace, flicking up more delicate scuff and crackle as they go. Just before a minute has passed, the wall focusses in on a slightly hollowed mid-frequency, and the track stays here, quite static, for a good while. However, whilst the wall is static, the volume is not, creeping lower and lower until it reaches its deepest valley around the halfway mark. After this, it slowly ascends upwards again, but the wall has changed. It’s harder, more blown-out, more saturated: it’s as if the storm has passed nearby, and then returned right overhead. It gradually increases in volume, until the end, revealing more of its open obliteration.

B is a different affair, though ‘reversed’ might be the better adjective. It begins with a near wash of distant, trebly noise, but after a while, bassier objects rumble and emerge. As my mention of reversal might have suggested, B inverts A’s trajectories, and goes quiet, loud, quiet. Though, perhaps the more correct description is: soft, hard, soft. This increasing hardness is achieved by the appearance of solid, rough, low-mid frequency textures, and an encroaching bass scourge - though, interestingly, the harder the wall becomes, the slower its apparent speed. This bass-heavy section, with fidgeting, thick crackles dancing all over it, trundles along for a few minutes before slowly receding back from whence it came. Again, though, the ‘returning’ part of the wall comes back stronger and grittier.

This is a really great tape, though I imagine the overt conceptualised nature of it will either excite or infuriate you. Indeed, perhaps one issue with it, is that once you’ve heard it, there is arguably less impetus to listen again - in the sense that, to my ears anyway, the quieter textures are less exciting than the louder ones, but your brain knows it will have to listen to them to get to these louder ones. Though this makes no difference to the initial listen, and indeed, further concentrated listens would allow the ear to enjoy (and analyse) the transitional sections of the pieces. Salamander, in fact, really demands concentrated listening, and nothing else. An interesting, and provocative, release.