The Frosted Ambassador: The Frosted Ambassador

The Frosted Ambassador, according to an accompanying press release, began his career in the late '70s as part of the group Chronicle Ape And The New Sound. Disappointed with his lack of success, he left America to study toast in Belgium at some point in the '80s. There, he recorded an album that "eventually resurfaced in 1995 in a shoe suspended over a colonial wig in a Georgia thrift store," a recording Kindercore Records is now releasing. "The Frosted Ambassador" is also the name of a track on the 1997 Olivia Tremor Control album Dusk At Cubist Castle, which ought to give some indication that it may actually be an experimental side project by unnamed members of the Elephant 6 collective, a loose organization that has OTC, The Apples In Stereo, and Neutral Milk Hotel as its core. The fact that it sounds just like an experimental side project from Elephant 6 is also something of a tip-off. But unlike Music Tapes, Julian Koster's ultra-experimental, somewhat oppressively self-serious Neutral Milk Hotel side project, The Frosted Ambassador is actually pretty fun. Its 12 untitled songs sound like the collective's take on '60s pop—lo-fi sensibilities filtered through hi-fi technology—taken to its trippiest extreme. Obviously, the appeal of such a project is pretty selective. But for those already taken with the Elephant 6 sound, or those predisposed to enjoy musical strangeness as an end to itself, The Frosted Ambassador is worth seeking out, be it at a record store or in a used shoe.