courtesy of Frost Children
Frost Children is the project of New York City-based siblings and musicians Lulu and Angel Prost, who got their start as part of the city’s (perhaps now notorious) Dimes Square nightlife scene, though they quickly set themselves apart with their playful and expressive take on electro-pop that felt fit for the club dancefloor. More recently, they’ve been stepping even further outside of that box and community. Today, the band releases its new EP, SOUL KISS, a project created in tandem with the experimental Japanese singer Haru Nemuri. On paper, theirs might seem like a unexpected team-up, but the music — exciting, brash — tells a different story.
According to a press release, the siblings and Nemuri met by chance on the road years ago, while performing at the same music festivals around the world. The close friendship and rapport they formed then led to their eventual team up for SOUL KISS, a project they say was sparked by “deep discussions on values and creativity.” They largely created the EP apart, sending ideas and demos back and forth, before testing the songs out at nightclubs in Berlin to “gauge fan interest and reaction.”
If the process sounds a bit disjointed, the music certainly isn’t — the songs, which skew hardcore and noisy punk rock, are excitingly fully-formed, even (especially) when they’re singing in different languages. It works exceptionally well on the standout single “Daijoubu Desu,” a screamy, punk anthem about feeling “overwhelmed, drowning in anxiety and melancholy, when I am stuck in an unforeseeable reality, or when I am at a loss not knowing how to even handle my own soul,” says Nemuri in a statement. As Lulu shouts about there being “no safe zone/ no matter/ no plot,” Nemuri’s roboticized vocals slide in to coyly ask, “daijoubu desu,” or “are you ok?” It seems being asked to tamper down your anger is a universal experience.
Despite her angelic vocals, Nemuri isn’t a stranger to screaming, shouting, and other vocal effects of harder genres; her catalog often rides the line between melodic and feeling unhinged. But her vocal performance does feel more enhanced over Frost Children’s production, perhaps an effect of their collaboration; on “Get Well Soon,” the EP’s shoegazey closer, she’s cooing and speaking over a wall of distortion but it still sounds hard as hell. The themes of the EP are largely catastrophic, but you can sense they also made it with a sense of play and experimentation.
Play, in fact, seems to be a theme of the year for Frost Children, who throughout 2024 has been on a collaborative kick releasing songs with rapper Danny Brown, Porter Robinson, Dorian Electra, and Shanghainese singer Sebii. Not all of the collabs are as out-of-the-box — most are safely in the hyperpop lane — but it’s been fun to witness the different ways Frost Children have been expanding their universe as artists who seem keen, and even well-suited, to working with new people. It signals a promising future for the group who’s worked hard to break-out of the often insular NYC music scene.
