Frozen Rabbit: 26,000

Vancouver B.C. electronic music stalwarts Phil Western and Tim Hill collaborate on 26,000, an evocative piece of ambient drone under their imprint Frozen Rabbit. Western is probably best known as a member of Skinny Puppy and Download...

Thus begins the Ricardo Wang review of the Frozen Rabbit CD 26,000.

Frozen Rabbit ~ “26,000”
CD from Dehausset Records
c/o www.flesheatingants.com

Vancouver B.C. electronic music stalwarts Phil Western and Tim Hill collaborate on 26,000, an evocative piece of ambient drone under their imprint Frozen Rabbit. Western is probably best known as a member of Skinny Puppy and Download, and his previous work with Hill has been rooted in that industrial dance music tradition. 26,000, however, is much more atmospheric and entirely beatless. The music drifts, echoes, reverberates, elevates, hypnotizes, collides, and colludes, but it never really crashes. This is the dreamlike state where you float miles above the earth and even occasionally swerve rapidly downward, coming within inches of ground, but you never actually touch it.
While Skinny Puppy are generally looked upon as forefathers of all things cold and digital, Frozen Rabbit is a surprisingly warm and unshakably analog affair. The CD comes with gorgeous yet twisted artwork by Vancouver graphic institution I, Braineater. In general a rather menacing aesthetic unfolds, extending to song titles such as "Mould Sets In" and "Isolate Now."

Yet audibly, there is an unusually approachable feel to Frozen Rabbit’s drone on 26,000, lending the sound a seductive quality that might trick a few cynics into listening longer than they had planned. The synths are expertly juxtaposed with haunting vocal loops that rise up from the ambient swamp, such as on the title track. During “Purification Process” it becomes difficult to tell if one is listening to a synth or a throat-singing loop, though there is definitely some mean-spirited heavy breathing to taint the seduction. These two seasoned gentlemen know their knobs and twiddle them in an undeniably likeable manner. It’s nice to have them treating the cerebral to the same dedication they have the physical in the past. —Ricardo Wang