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.

Only recently have I been exposed to the work of Conure, solo project of San Franciscan Mark Wilson who is also a member of the 3 man experimental/ambient/noise group 15 Degrees Below Zero, and Imperial Floral Assault. Wilson also has a split release with 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 ambient noise, Mark is definitely your man. Of late with Edgetone Records, he also has releases on the Crunch Pod label. He’s an active artist often performing live with others in the genre.

Conure is uncompromising noisescapes of the first order. To the initiated, the noise genre might just seem like, well... just a lot of noise. Something akin to turning on all of your household appliances and letting them run wild. That ain’t necessarily so. There are shifts and subtleties to good noisescapes that go well beyond clatter, feedback and rumble. And the shifts and subtleties are what make "STREAM" such an engaging release.

Composed of only 5 tracks clocking in at a little over 52 minutes, STREAM begins with "Deep", the second longest track on the CD. Imagine being tossed into a huge washing machine, submerged between the socks, jeans, shirts, underwear, etc. Now imagine all the clothes speaking to you in their soggy, fabricated language. Now imagine the rhythm and turbulence of the machine. Also imagine the machine going through its cycles- wash, spin, rinse. Feel the slosh and slog of the water. Although there is more to it than that, you get the basic idea of "Deep".

"Hobart" howls with feedback over 60 cycle hum and static radio skip, and oscillators gone wild inside a cavernous environment. "Sycon" begins with a dense intensity of noise that morphs into a harmonically rich synth chord while a rich pastiche of other thick sonic elements are introduced while oscillator tones wind it up and down simultaneously, flowing right into the next track, "Gale". "Gale" introduces some clink and clatter into the mix with a deep LFO square wave as the underpinning and plenty of sonic effluvia. A muted, morphing pseudo-arpeggiation in the background, synth squeaks and squawks, and dense slabs of noise-sonics fill out the remainder of the track. You get the feeling toward the end that at any moment, this thing’s gonna blow!

The final and longest track, "Balch" (another seamless transition) is the nexus and culmination of everything that’s gone on so far. Everything comes apart at the seams here. If the machines seemed to be at least functional when STREAM began, they are in total entropy here. Chaos reigns and nothing is stable. So many diverse elements compete with each other for supremacy that it hurts; really hurts. This is noise that only real noise enthusiasts can appreciate. No placid dark ambient stuff here. Violent, brutal and intense. Like durian fruit, a strong cigar, or a raw habanero pepper, you really have to have the taste for this kind of stuff to appreciate it fully. For me, it’s a mood thing, but I know good ambient noise from bad ambient noise, and this is some of the best I’ve heard in a long time.

Nothing like trying to fill the whole frigging CD! Here we have two tracks weighing in at 36:17 & 42:18. Recorded live in Detroit at the Bohemian National Home, we have the usual modern jazz expression (three reed players, piano, bass, drums) embellished with lecturer (this will be irritating or interesting depending on your political orientation) on track #1 and Laotian Mouth Organ on track #2. Sliding in and out of structured forms and historical quotations, all are played with a certain amount of freedom but there is also a sense of composition as well to hold the whole thing together. I don’t have enough of a background in this to say whether anything new is being added to the idiom (or if that’s even possible any longer). All I do know is that some parts I liked and some parts were lost to me. The musicianship is beyond question. Now all we need to ask is if we need more or less of this kind of thing. It seems to me that music has arrived at a place that simply serves the egotism of personal expression. But then again, maybe that’s the point.

Mixing the sounds of oboe, English horn, lap steel guitar, and various percussion instruments Ghost in the House (David Michalak-lap steel guitar, buffalo drum; Karen Stackpole-gongs, percussion; Kyle Bruckmann-oboe, English horn; Tom Nunn-crustacean, water phone & other original invemtions) creates an exotic world of ancient ritual and lysergic tableau. I lean towards ancient Egypt, but you may hear something else. Very dreamlike at times, as in good or bad dream. Regardless, a very different trip in whatever way you want to understand the word.

Rent Romus’s Lords of Outland’s latest release "You Can Sleep When You’re Dead" is definitely an album that will keep you awake and on your toes with its in your face blend of free-jazz, hardcore, and experimental electronica. The album offers an abrasive collection of tracks that sounds like James and Chance and the Contortions on some dangerous mixture of meth and speedballs. The songs are mostly comprised of noise jazz played on the saxophone, drums, and bass, with electronics being used minimally for added effect. However, as abrasive as the music is, it is much easier on the ears than John Zorn’s hardcore jazz works. And for you Zorn fans out there, this album doesn’t have any Japanese guys screaming gibberish. Additionally, the album also has some more relaxed moments, in that the pace is slower such as tracks like "The Demonic Circus of Certified Insular Asshogs" and "Disturbing Emergence" (FYI, I hear that the process for obtaining Insular Asshog Certification is rigorous). Though, even with these mellower tracks the album as a whole has an intensity to it that makes me fidgety and unsettled, especially with its off-time tempos and cluttered percussion. And this is coming from some one that listens to Merzbow while he studies. So, if you enjoy out there free jazz and noise music, then I would recommend this album. If you are looking for something more electronic, than Lords of the Outland would probably not be your cup of tea.