Mel Cepstral is as elusive as he is unknown. When we last caught up with him, he had moved to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, located just a stone's throw from the geographic south pole and thousands of miles away from anything, much less a thriving music scene. We spoke with him over a slow internet link.

JF: What on earth are you doing at the south pole?

Mel Cepstral: I ask myself that every day [laughs]. I came here for the three hundred degree club last winter, and I'm still here. I want to visit the other pole too, but that's harder because there isn't a station there; it's just ice.

JF: Why the poles?

MC: This is where the axis of rotation is for the earth. That makes it a very special place, astronomically speaking. But I don't mean to sound mystical.

JF: What inspires you?

MC: I don't really think about inspiration. I think my favorite answer to that question by a composer is Steve Tibbetts who said "coffee". For me composing is a kind of monastic and contemplative activity, and so in that sense it inspires me in the rest of my life. But people make too much of inspiration and motivation. I do some of my best work when I'm uninspired.

JF: What other composers do you admire?

MC: I don't really admire composers over other people. Everyone's a composer because any kind of creative act is composition, including listening actively. I guess that means that the answer to your question is John Cage and the whole experimental tradition he represents. Which is a lot of people, more than I could name.

JF: You write a lot of your own software. Why is that?

MC: Most music software is geared towards a particular music-making process, usually a commercial process. And I find it so frustrating to use some of this software and run into the limitations of that process and not be able to change or redirect that process, which is what composing is for me. So I really have to write my own software, or I'm letting the designers of the commercial software and the demands of the marketplace make some of the compositional decisions for me. Which is great if you agree with all those decisions, like if you're producing a pop album or making techno music or whatever. But then writing my own software presents its own limitations.

JF: Like what?

MC: Mostly the limited amount of effort I have for it. I can't spend all my time adding new features to my software because that has to be secondary to actually making music. A good example of this kind of work style is the animator Bob Sabiston, who developed a rotoscoping system called Rotoshop. He's had some pressure to commercialize the software but has resisted it because that process would demand so much of his time that he wouldn't be able to do much animation. And then the other big limit is how bad I am at math. But that may be a blessing in disguise.

JF: How so?

MC: Once again, because I may look at things in an idiosyncratic way. Which is great, unless you're an engineer. The guys here at the station help me, though. Most of them are scientists, and know way more math than me. They don't all appreciate my music [laughs], but they're kind of a captive audience.

JF: Do you perform, given that most of your work is done on a computer?

MC: I do what the techno people do; I show up with my laptop, plug it in, start up my programs, and play. It must be really boring to watch. When I'm lucky I have a projector and I can put up scores or screens or just eye candy so that I don't bore people to tears.

JF: Do you ever write instrumental music?

MC: Sure, but only for my friends who play instruments. In school the idea was to write instrumental pieces and send them to competitions in the hope that they'd win and you'd get a performance. What an awful condition to write music in. The whole time you're thinking: "I've got to write something that the competition committee will like so I can have a chance at hearing it." How does that encourage creative work?

JF: What are you thinking now the whole time you're working on a piece?

MC: That's a hard question to answer really completely. Mostly it's sort of "what if" questions. Like, "what if I fiddle with this parameter or move this element over or connect these two things together?" And then I listen, and find out what if. And then the magic happens [laughs]. No, and then I either hate it and hit "undo", or I move on to the next "what if".

JF: What's next for you?

MC: I don't know. I have some gigs in South Africa in the summer, but I'm not going anywhere until then. There aren't a lot of cheap flights to and from the south pole.

JF: One last question. How's the weather down there?

MC: Beautiful. It's sunny, not much wind today, and a balmy -23°F. Not that I've been outside.