15 Degrees Below Zero are Daniel Blomquist, Michael Addison Mersereau and Mark Wilson, their instrumentation comprising everything but the kitchen sink (laptop, samplers, keyboards, effects, mixing, processing, guitars, vocals, harmonica, pedals, contact microphones, etc.). Their latest album, "Resting on A" was mastered by Thomas Dimuzio, a fringe music artist/producer with a Bill Laswell-sized discography and a name well-known to those "in the know" about ambient-industrial noise. If you like experimental ambient music, 15 Degrees Below Zero is a project well worth checking out.

"Resting on A" takes a very minimal approach, even with the track titles. ("4.1", "4.4", "5", "12.2", "25", etc.) I’m guessing there might be some mathematical significance to that, but I flunk high school algebra, so how would I really know? The soundscapes on this work are somewhat more spacey and subdued than what I’ve heard on previous 15 Degrees releases, nearly Enoesque in some places. Multilayered, but still very minimal, where events blend and morph with each other in an often placid pastiche, a dichotomy of calm and tension, stillness and motion. This is best illustrated on the lengthy track "5", which runs about 24 ½ minutes. This is not drone music, but atmosphere music. In your mind you may hear ghostly voices emerge, or you may get the impression of arctic isolation. The canvas on which 15 Degrees Below Zero paints is open to interpretation, often seemingly amorphous, yet with structure and balance. Even subdued melody can be extracted from certain passages.

The track following "5" has more experimental noise in the form of recurring looped pitched noise and static distortion that culminates seamlessly in wavering bellish bass tones on the next track. I’m guessing there is some heavy use of ring modulation here. There is much emphasis on the lower frequencies throughout the album, so you should prepare your listening system for that. Not to say that higher timbres have been neglected, they do appear transiently for affect now and then. I wonder how much of the music has been improvised, and how much has been structured, as it seems to have a rather precise framework.

Track 6 ("12.1") features some spoken word over repeated electronic tones and noise rumblings. I’m not much of fan of spoken word samples in music except for short, appropriate interjections (that’s the old school industrial in me) but it’s a short track and not really obtrusive. Track 7 ("19.2") features old school electronics along the lines of Varèse, Stockhausen, etc., a sort of nod to musique concrete. On the final track, "12.4", heavy processed guitar takes over. All-in-all, "Resting on A" is a really good album with a high replayability factor. But there is more... a bonus video of "December December" a track from their previous "New Travel" CD. It would not play without glitches for me no matter what program I used to play it on, but the surreal visuals were rather interesting.