In conversation with Frost Children

for Glamcult #143, the DEEPREAL issue

Like twins. Like friends. Like sisters. The New York-based music duo Frost Children, IRL siblings Angel & Lulu Prost, splice EDM, hyperpop, Jersey club, punk, bloghouse, and bubblegum electronics into a single, overclocked signal. Influenced by the rumbling of the web’s past and present, Frost Children grab the algorithmic nostalgia churn to halt, take the machine’s pieces apart, and re-order them to fit their vision. Chainsaw synths buzz and tumble, leaning over the edge, primally waiting to drop.  

Frost Children is an embodiment of Gen Z’s dualities and contradictions: somewhat absurd but never emotionally detached, uniquely referential but deeply intrinsic, ecstatic but emo. Their music is the psychedelic fallout of being terminally logged in, bathing in the trenches of the online void, rendered at club volume. Under their command, the brain-fried overstimulation of life in the feed transforms into something you can scream-dance to at 3 a.m. with strangers who somehow already feel like friends. Ultimately, this energy, so deeply felt by their cult following, spills over from their own telepathic bond. Both grounding and generative, their siblinghood is a safe zone to play — and we’re all invited.

Hey! <3 Lovely to speak to you, how are you today?
Angel: Monday morning, beautiful day. Summer is over, and the album is upon us. I feel excited.
Lulu: Winter is coming.

Lulu and I were just talking about how it’s easier for them to create when it’s depressing and cold outside. Do you both share the same sentiment?
L: Yeah, I was just saying that New York winters force us to create inspiration out of nothing. It’s so harsh and cruel, but it pushes us.
A: I agree. You have to be uncomfortable to make interesting art. That’s why New York attracts so many creative people. Hopefully, it’s going to be the coldest October of all time here. The best shit ever might come out.

You guys are from Missouri, right? Wouldn’t you say it’s uncomfortable there? And I don’t mean only weather-wise.
L:  Yeah, St. Louis has the hottest summers ever and the coldest winters. Summers hit 100– 110°F with intense humidity, which makes everyone upset. There’s a kind of Midwest charm, but also a Midwest anger; people get so hot and don’t know what to do with themselves.
A: Winters had insane ice and the most muggy summers. It was always extreme. And being a high schooler is uncomfortable no matter what. We were lucky in our childhood, but definitely loners and a little sad at times.

It’s a mandatory phase. Were you close to each other throughout high school as well?
A: Yeah, we’ve always been friends, though not as close as now with the music.
L : Our older brother taught us a lot about production. He’s not part of Frost Children, but we all share the same EDM sentiment. He was just here, and we all went to see Above & Beyond, this OG trance group. Growing up, we were always inspiring each other with the random shit we listened to. There was never a time we weren’t in touch.

How did you crystallise your sound into what it is now?
L: We’ve made a lot of different sounds as it is, and that variety shaped us. Angel had an indie band and was making guitar music. I was making a lot of dreamy and jazzy stuff in college, and at Belmont, this music school in Nashville. When we started Frost Children, electronics just came together seamlessly. I think it’s like a linear thing; it will always take its own chapters and sounds, depending on where we’re at in life. 

A Frost Children jazz record would go really hard. 
L: I mean, like.. It’s not even a bad idea. EDM is a bit like jazz, where it’s like… Never mind, I was trying to come up with a paragraph.

No, please elaborate. I’m curious where you were going with that.
A: You have to commit to the opinion now.
L: If you think about it, EDM can feel like jazz as a performer, euphoric and long-form, where you’re just sort of in this infinite groove together. You just riff and go. Kind of like a really long DJ set, where you have to read the room and play off of people. And you have to break the rules.
A: Yeah, EDM is exactly like jazz.

Hot take, I’m into it. Do you two ever get fed up with each other?
A: Not really. As siblings, we’ve mastered listening, understanding, and respectfully disagreeing. We never get angry with each other. Sometimes we get mad at other people, but not between us. We are pretty chill people. We’re not solving brain cancer here. And the moment you apply so much pressure to it like that, I think something gets lost. Frost Children is about lifting each other and accentuating our strengths.
L:  If we ever clash, we squash it quickly. We just understand each other so well. We get each other’s vibe.

Do you feel like you have telepathic powers? A certain unspoken understanding with each other?
A: Yes, I think so. We often make unspoken decisions when producing or writing. It’s like a secret language. There’s an intensity in siblinghood — it can be hard and even hurtful. You see this person who has the same blood as you doing something else, but it also makes what we do possible. Our song “Sister” explores that dynamic. Growing up and watching iCarly or Drake and Josh, there were a lot of examples of successful siblinghood.
L: Siblinghood always felt like a safety net. I can’t be mad at Angel for too long because what we are doing now is so awesome. But we also don’t do each other wrong, and we have the same friends, and live in the same world together. We can’t stay mad at each other because what we’re creating is too special. We just feel too blessed. There are a lot of things that could upset us and cause strife or something, like if a show goes badly or people don’t like a new song. But we’re just coming from a place of curiosity, and we’re not really concerned about reception. Obviously, we want people to like it. But we have that siblinghood that keeps us driving with excitement and inspiration. 

I imagine there’s also a layer of humour and irony, almost? When shit goes wrong, it’s nice to be able to laugh with someone about it.
A: That’s true. In general, it’s life. I think you’re right. Nothing’s really worth getting that stressed about in the end. 

You mention that you don’t really care about the reception of your music, but does it make you feel a certain way when people group your work with the indie sleaze revival? Like your identity get flattened or misinterpreted?
L:  No, we mostly find that funny. Blogs can label us, and we find it so funny. Because like, we don’t live inside a scene. We don’t make music to live inside of a movement that is not our own project. It’s kind of like looking at brain rot on Instagram.
A: I don’t blame people for trying to categorise us. People like categories — it helps them process things. Every artist thinks, and should think, that their work is the most important thing ever. I think Frost Children is the most important thing ever.  So if someone calls us indie sleaze, the knee-jerk reaction is like “No, I’m totally different”.  That’s fine. I don’t feel offended — I’m just happy when people like it.

And do you associate yourself with the revival of Bloghouse, for example?
A: We’re definitely not not a part of it.
L: There are elements of it in our music.
A:  We identify more with EDM than Bloghouse, though some songs sound Bloghouse-y. That came more from not wanting to sound like “hyperpop” at the time, which felt saturated with splice loops and stacked walls of sound. We didn’t want to sound like everyone else, so we used fewer layers and slowed it down a bit, less breakcore and more club beats, which ended up sounding closer to Bloghouse. So I think we actually, unconsciously, naturally found our way into it. Probably in the same way that original era Bloghouse producers did, which is interesting. We love Ed Banger, Kitsuné Maison compilations, and similar stuff, but we see our music and songwriting as transcending those labels.
L: It also transcends EDM, I think. We were first drawn to writing Ska songs. Most of our songs on SISTER were written on guitar first, and then we built them out into an instrumental dance beat. We are bringing elements of these different genres back into the scene, but I believe in the music more than fitting into a movement.

Fair enough. And within that, would you say you have stable perceptions of yourself and your aesthetic, or is it something that developed over time?
L: Both. I feel like our visual language evolves, and we are changing it for each era. I’ve done different hair for each one. I’m really into Lady Gaga or Gerard Way. They have evolving visual languages. Right now, our looks are exaggerated versions of our true selves.
A: You have to cut through the noise of imagery somehow, but you also have to have a repetition of the same consistency across shows and press. It wasn’t instant; there was exploration. Sonically, I think we focused on this album more, and it’s more of what I want to be making, but who knows how we will feel in the next two years.

Do you feel like your artistry is influenced by being online?
A: Definitely — we grew up online, finding sounds on YouTube channels like Proximity and MrSuicideSheep, this channel that had like really crazy beautiful EDM songs, and finding beat packs and FLStudio. That shaped us. But now everyone is online, so it doesn’t mean much anymore. I don’t think there’s anyone in our audience who has under 5 hours of screen time. I’d be really interested to see that, actually.
L: Even if I don’t think I am, I am certainly inspired by the internet. Not in a way of seeing what our contemporaries are doing, but just scrolling on reels, seeing people do crazy things. I can’t really explain; scrolling brings you to a certain headspace. It kind of feels psychedelic. It makes me feel like I fucked up my brain and now have to go do something else, like make music. But ultimately, I think life outside the phone inspires us most.
A: Have you seen this guy who will go to the beach, and people are there with their lawn chairs watching the sunset? And he’ll interrupt their view with a massive vertical TV screen that’s just playing this insane edit of brain rot. Or he’ll be at a store, and he’ll ask people to come over, pretending he needs some help with his car or something. And then it’s that screen with brain rot outside the car, and he just hypnotises them. It’s amazing. It almost makes me want to make something that has that feeling. 

The infamous brain rot spell… Tell me more about your upcoming album, SISTER! You wrote your last album on a farm. How does the creative process compare now for you?
A: Yeah, Hearth Room was made in a cabin in Pennsylvania. SISTER was created all over — Mexico, London, Philly, New York, and even in a tour van. But the process was just me and Lulu making shit like it will always be. A big change this time: we wrote songs on guitar first, then applied beats after. I think this time we were like, What if we had a song we could play for like a Tiny Desk concert? This gave it a special texture that I really love. The songs are all over the palace but universal, emotional, and saturated as fuck.

Do you feel like you open up about yourselves through your music?
A: What I love about music is that you discover what you are feeling while you are making the beats. You don’t know until you rip the band-aid off, until you start making it. Honestly, what matters is the psychedelic experience of making a song. What was interesting about making SISTER was that there was so much overload.
L: There were so many demos that didn’t make it. We made around 70 demos, and even the tiniest ideas were tried out. Some of them we might never touch again. 
A: We made a mistake by playing one of the demos that didn’t make it live once; now our fans really want it. Releasing an album really is like giving birth, like this is our child now. It was really hard to narrow the songs down to the best ones. 

Killing your darlings must be a rough process. But speaking of performing live, we’re looking forward to the tour for SISTER. Where are you most excited to play?
A: I like playing in the small cities a lot. It feels like music – cool music – is more needed in those places. I want to play more of them; it feels very special. One day, we’ll make it everywhere.

It reminded me of a video from the Subway Takes guy, where the take was that it’s way more impressive to be cool from buttfuck nowhere rather than to be cool from a big city.
A: 100% agree. If you are a skater tattoo artist in a band in a random town in Wyoming, you are 15000 times cooler than some skater tattoo artist guy in a band from LA. It’s interesting, I want to live in NYC, and I want to have kids at some point. But maybe I’m doing them a disservice. We have to go somewhere really depressing, like Siberia or Alaska, to have a really cool kid.

What would you do if your child didn’t turn out cool?
A: I think it’s biologically impossible for me to produce an uncool child.

True, that was a silly question. On a final note, how would you like Frost Children to be experienced by the audience? Where does the universe of Frost Children exist?
A: It exists on big speakers, outside at sunset. 

With a massive screen playing reels passing by once in a while…
A: Exactly!
L: Go with a friend to a Frost Children show, it will be the best night of your life. Our music lives in that kind of shared, euphoric space. And if you don’t have a sister, now you have one through the album.