Frost Children: chilling with the internet’s coolest band - Dazed

Taken from the winter 2022 issue of Dazed. You can buy a transcript of our latest contented here

St Louis, Missouri is location to the longest outlet promenade successful the world. Situated conscionable disconnected Route 370, it was erstwhile a beacon of commerce: a multi-level metropolis of accelerated nutrient and manner chains, an antidote to the bleakness of suburban life. But, similar thousands of malls crossed the country, decades of economical diminution forced its closure successful 2019. “There wasn’t thing to do,” says Angel Prost, “so we stayed indoors.” She’s referring to Lulu, her younger sibling and the different fractional of popular duo Frost Children. Together they were raised successful St Louis, nicknamed by locals arsenic the buying outlet suburb of Missouri. But portion different kids hung retired astatine the mall, Frost Children recovered a new, spiritual home: the internet.

Speaking implicit Zoom from their shared flat successful Ridgewood, Queens – “we usage Lulu’s country arsenic a studio”, they say – the brace are portion of a caller cohort of artists to travel retired of New York’s downtown scene. Emerging retired of the pandemic, these highly online creatives and tastemakers span the worlds of fashion, creation and media, with savvy net personalities that spill retired crossed Substacks, podcasts and meme accounts. “I’m decidedly a hyper-online person,” Angel says. “I’m truly posting a batch connected my communicative connected Instagram these days; it’s astir similar I live-journal each thought I have. I honestly don’t spot immoderate occupation with it.” Her TikTok is besides an hold of these regular reflections, laced with the benignant of based and irony-pilled musings that flourish online. “These are existent thoughts I’m having, it’s not similar I’m being tarnished and my encephalon is dying from hyper-posting. It’s conscionable a medium, similar penning successful a journal, but it’s going connected to the internet.”

Online and IRL, the downtown country isn’t defined by 1 benignant oregon sound, but alternatively encompasses an full umbrella of art, ideas and cliques. With Dimes Square’s micro-neighbourhood astatine its centre, there’s a self-sustaining ecosystem of artists anxious to collaborate. Angel recalls gathering Blake Ortiz-Goldberg AKA Blaketheman1000, the rapper down the much-hyped way “Dean Kissick”, implicit DMs aft helium work 1 of her articles successful the sceney section insubstantial The Drunken Canal. Ortiz-Goldberg present co-manages the band, conducting play meetings astatine Ming’s Cafe connected Canal Street. “There’s an infinite magnitude of scenes here: the Dare-Strange-Ranger-Porches world, the much ravey Rash-Club-Cringe-Heaven DJ thing,” she says. “We run successful some worlds simultaneously. And they’re truly happening close now.”

“The rhythm of referential creation is expanding truthful accelerated successful presumption of music” – Angel

Balancing connected the cusp of the underground physics country and the burgeoning indie revival, Frost Children’s euphony is hard to pin down. It’s the benignant of terminally online, remix culture- influenced dependable that successful 2020 would person been labelled arsenic hyperpop, but has since mutated into a fluid benignant that spans everything from synth popular to punk stone and hardstyle. “Lately erstwhile we’ve been asked what benignant of euphony we marque we conscionable accidental it’s confidential,” says Angel, “but different times we’ll conscionable accidental that we’re emerging popular artists.” Inspired successful adjacent parts by golden-era YouTube and 00s kids’ TV shows similar iCarly, their tracks are imbued with a playful Web 1.0 earnestness, with glitched-out soundbites and YouTube poop samples hurtling the listener into disorientating states of integer disarray.

“The rhythm of referential creation is expanding truthful accelerated successful presumption of music,” says Angel. “I saw a tweet, it said: who’s gonna bash the hyperpop revival? [Like] ‘Wow, this bushed is truthful 2020 hyperpop.’ We each cognize what that means and what it sounds like. But 15 years agone we would accidental this opus is truthful 3 years ago. You would person to person been truly precocious up successful the popular accumulation iceberg to cognize what that meant. I’m funny to spot what’s gonna hap erstwhile it collides connected itself.”

Despite the information that we’re speaking done a machine screen, the speech doesn’t consciousness awkward – it’s nary antithetic than speaking to a regular net friend. “Our onstage quality is this happening successful our heads that we tin crook connected and disconnected astatine immoderate fixed point,” says Lulu. Together they person an astir hive mind-like rapport, the benignant that tin lone travel with being adjacent siblings. “We grew up together, we unrecorded together, marque euphony together, execute together, spell connected circuit together. It’s ever conscionable chill,” says Angel. “But we did person competitory YouTube channels astatine 1 point.”

Frost Children played immoderate of their formative shows successful quarantine, DJing astatine Zoom nights specified arsenic the LA-based Subculture, and their hyper-online euphony is paired with a distinctly URL aesthetic designed to smash-and-grab the attraction of adjacent the smoothest brains. But making euphony that reflects the frenzied gait of the net isn’t an casual task. Trends determination faster than memes and autumn unfortunate to the eternal scroll. This is thing the brace privation to combat with their upcoming releases, SPEED RUN and HEARTH ROOM. “It’s the arc that an creator has implicit a lifetime, but compacted into 2 speedy albums,” says Lulu, who says SPEED RUN is “the-pop-artist-big-ego-paparazzi” medium and HEARTH ROOM is its “ego-death-lifestyle-moved-upstate” companion.

That night, Frost Children play a amusement astatine the two-year day enactment for zeitgeisty newsletter Perfectly Imperfect, alongside a formed of downtown faces including indie darlings The Hellp and PC Music’s umru. The pair’s acceptable zooms astatine lightning speed, a sensory overload of memey ideas and catchy melodies that burrow heavy into your skull. “The beingness task of euphony is creating truthful galore antithetic vibes, arcs and phases successful a abbreviated magnitude of clip that it’s astir unfathomable,” says Angel. “That’s a truly chill mode to beryllium a performing creator successful the post-internet era.”

Hair LUCAS WILSON astatine DAY ONE, make-up JANESSA PARÉ astatine THE TOGETHER COMPANY, nails ERI HANDA for FACULTY astatine HOME, photographic assistants PATRICK LYN, NICK GRENNON, styling adjunct ASHLEY ZIELINSKI, integer relation XIANGYUN CHEN, accumulation CLM

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