Sie navigieren sich durch Manhattan's Dächer und Keller, sie wussten schon vorgestern was übermorgen cool ist - und nun setzen Frost Children Fuss auf Europa, OMG! Das Geschwister-Duo bestehend aus Lulu und Angel Prost ist seit ihrem Album "SPIRAL" 2022 kaum mehr aus dem 3FACH-Musikprogramm wegzudenken. Mit ihrem neuen Album "SPEED RUN" machen sie wenige Stopps in Europa und besuchen 3FACH in Luzern für ein intimes (und sehr heisses) Konzert im Klub Kegelbahn.
Frost Children im Strobolicht des dunkeln Klub Kegelbahn. (Bild: 3FACH)
Angel und Lulu wirken bei ihrer Ankunft im 3FACH gelassen - vielleicht auch einfach nur sehr jetlagged. Das erklärt wohl auch, warum sich Angel gleich zum Start des Interviews kühlende Augenpads aufsetzt (iconic). Während 50 Minuten navigieren wir uns durch diverse Dimensionen des Frost Children Universums. In der Sendung (unten) konnten wir jedoch nur einen Bruchteil des Interviews wiedergeben. Dafür hörst du darin ganz viel Musik von ihnen - in der Reihenfolge, in der sie am Konzert gespielt wurden.
Queertopia: In May you played a little tour with Yves Tumor and Pretty Sick, and soon you're going on a new tour with George Clanton. Now you're on tour all alone. In what ways does it feel different this time?
Angel: The Yves Tumor tour was amazing because it was the first time we played these big venues with a lot of hands around to help you do things, and sort things out for you. When you're headlining shows, it's just a lot more pressure, I guess. But also we get to play way longer, which I think is the more ideal situation. Because we like playing really long shows.
Lulu: The Yves Tumor tour part was a 20-minute set. Which was iconic, like it was still sick. But you wanna fall in love with the audience and vice versa, and that takes minimum 40 minutes. We're still playing to a lot of audiences that have no idea who we are and the fun of the game is to make them care about the show. Or just not even care about it, but just be like: “I don’t know why but whatever this is, is making me dance.”.
Queertopia: You have a lot of exchange with your audience through the Internet. For example with your discord server. Do you feel like they are bystanders, or are they actually also kind of part of Frost Children for you?
Lulu: Definitely part of.
Angel: Yeah, it's definitely more part of it than like classically what an audiences or fan bases relationship to an artist would be.
Lulu: Also, we should give it the proper name: the Abrys fam.
Angel: Abrys fam, yeah. Ultimately, I think the direction of Frost Children is- we're trying to, encompass a little bit of everything, even outside of music and so I want to make enough music so that we can have like our own source of it. You don't even have to go to Spotify. We have so many vibes touched upon in our music, that it's just like a one stop shop. And so kind of with the discord, my approach to it has been like: this is just an alternative social media and serves the same function and it's not even related to the music necessarily, but it just a channel of anything.
Lulu: And also I think a lot embracing that - what Angel just said - is bringing in other voices into what we're doing too. Because there's only so much that we can do, but we can provide a source for other artists to do really sick shit too.
Queertopia: In a lot of interviews you talked about cringe and how you love it and how freeing it can be when it comes from a place of love. And Angel, I think you especially said an interview that there is a fine line between cringe and hate. Do you think there's also a fine line between cringe and cool?
Angel: Yeah, for sure. I think the coolest things are cringe in the moment, maybe. You know? The things that we think are crazy and iconic now. I think to breach into the territory of iconic you have to do something that objectively, in the moment to a room full of people is like: (Breathes in sharply) “Meeh, this kind of weird.” My big thing now is MMQ. It's a “moment of mild quirkiness”. It's something that you do in a social environment that establishes a baseline of quirkiness. And you've broken the seal that you're not in this normal world of convention. It is liberating in the same way cringe is.
Queertopia: Do you sometimes fear that Frost Children maybe could become too cool to be cringe?
Angel: Oh, that's a really good question. I I don't think so.
Lulu: I mean, I love music that makes me feel cool. When I come across an artist and I'm like: “Oh, that's that's cool.” that's usually what you say when it doesn't strike you as anything crazy. But when you have a mystique or something and they're like: “Oooooh, that person's coooooool.” it's a very short lived feeling when you when you think about a person like that.
Angel: I don't want to be considered a cringe artist or a cool artist, you know? They're all like ingredients. And when you think about it, cringe really is a relative term. So if you're making cringe music and performing it in front of a cool audience the cringe factor is max. But if you're performing this sort of cool persona to an audience that's already woke on cringe-ness, then maybe that's cringe to them in a way that they don't even understand yet. There's just the otherness, maybe that's central to cringe.
Queertopia: Many of your fans are queer, and maybe they even find out new things about their identity through you when they listen to your songs or when they watch your music videos. How does it feel to be like an important role model for some of your fans?
Angel: It's a beautiful thing and it’s how I started to discover things about myself - through other role models. I don't really identify with anything specifically. It's kind of just like my own thing. And I don't really see it represented; this version of femininity, that's kind of weird in the middle. But it's not non binary. It's just like a unique thing to me. I don't try to overthink it and I think a lot of people are vibing with that.
Lulu: Obviously you’re able to express yourself freely in a place like New York versus where we were growing up. So I definitely feel blessed to be where I am and be able to do that without thinking about it. There's a lot of people on our discord who live in places where it's not as possible to do what we're doing in New York.
Queertopia: As you can see, we live in a very small city called Lucerne where like 60,000 people live. And there aren't a lot of opportunities for queer people like us. A (concert) night like this maybe happens from time to time. What life advice can you give to young queer babies? Or what advice would you give your younger self that grew up in a small town?
Lulu: Surrounding yourself with your own community of people that support you and uplift you the way that you want to uplift them; that's the best-case scenario. It's all about finding that. It takes time. You might go through a stage where you're in a community that feels right but then still doesn't - I feel like I've been through lots of different kinds of stages and now I feel like I've finally found my my world and my community where I can do the craziest thing feel like it's not that crazy.
Mit Drummer und E-Gitarren sorgen Frost Children an dem Abend im Klub Kegelbahn für den einen oder anderen Tinnitus. (Bild: 3FACH)
Would you rather????
Queertopia: Would you rather have dinner with SpongeBob or Patrick?
Angel: Probably SpongeBob. Yeah, because, I mean, he can cook.
Lulu: I'd rather go with Patrick. I'm with stupid.
Queertopia: In your music you scream, you whisper, or sing softly all at once. Would you rather only ever be able to sing in music or only ever scream in music?
Lulu: Ah, sing.
Angel: Probably saying. I mean, if I could scream sustainably forever and it wouldn't affect my voice that might change things. But in this scenario where vocal cords are real, then yeah, sing.
Queertopia: Would you rather never slay again or slay so hard every day that slay loses all meaning?
Angel: See, this is kind of what I was touching upon with cringe. We do cringe so much - the opposite of cringe maybe is just like normal coolness. But anyways, slay so hard every day that slay loses all meaning.
Lulu: Yeah, yeah, because then you just redefine it.
Angel: You can't stop. You can't stop the bit. That's full commitment and we're all about full commitment at Frost Children.
Queertopia: Would you rather have hair that you can bleach as many times as you want and it never breaks off…
Angel: Already done.
Queertopia: …or the ability to perfectly draw on an eyeliner every single time?
Angel: Already done.
Angel + Lulu: Probably the hair. The hair, the hair.
Queertopia: Would you rather “na na na na na na” or “hi hi hi hi ha ha ha ha” all day forever?
Lulu: Probably “hi hi ha ha”. “na na na na” is more of a like a self-centered chant.
Angel: I feel like “na na na na”. I feel like my thoughts just slowly divulge into that. One of my favorite things to do is walk around a new city that you haven't been to before and just kind of babble to yourself, just like have thoughts and kind of just like say them out loud. It's very “na na na na” core.
Reacting to old songs pre Frost Children
Angel: I made it probably during like pandemic when I was living in Bushwick, by myself. Essentially, Lulu was still in Nashville. Pre frost children. Then I was just making fast music as fast as possible. I remember my friend Kristal and I we're listening to “Best Of Both Worlds” by Miley. And I was like, what if there was a song called “The Worst Of Both Worlds”. I was like “it kind of feels like my life right now” with like gender stuff. I didn't really feel like one of the boys or one of the girls. Just the empty human. It's the worst of both worlds.
Lulu: Oh, shit. Whoa, wait, how did you find this cause I can't even find this! So I don't think I've ever said this publicly, but I had a project called “Torrus”. It was like my dubstep future base project. And I made a couple remixes with older brother Brian who goes by “Altruze”. Y'all went crazy deep. I was literally like 14.
Frost Children mit Queertopia Moderator*innen Riley und Ilayda im 3FACH. (Bild: 3FACH)
Queertopia: In what way did your approach to making an album change from SPIRAL to SPEED RUN?
Lulu: It's the clubs. I moved to New York and we started DJing. When SPIRAL came out and we couldn't DJ any of the songs because they were all really impossible to dance to in the club because they're all too busy. So we're like: “what if you made an album that was club friendly that we could dance to?”. You could just play the whole album in the club and that was it.
Queertopia: This is your first release on a label as well. How does it feel to give creative tasks like directing a music video to people other than you two?
Lulu: Yeah, it's actually huge because I realized I don't know everything. In fact, I only know a couple things really well and I suck at the other things.
Angel: Yeah, letting other people be part of the process has always been good for us. It's not like we're just walking up to a guy being like, can you make a music video? (We’re still involved in the creative process). Also it’s sick to be able to pay your friends with money from a label.
Queertopia: Although you two seem really unified, I'm sure there are musical knickknacks that your opinions are far off from each other. What are some of those things and how do you solve a conflict?
Angel: Ohh, Lulu hates sauerkraut. Yeah, that's a big point of contention.
Lulu: Angel is really into this artist TX2 and I don't like TX2. I hate it.
Angel: Fuck you.
Queertopia: There we have it. Conflict not solved.
That's not all - das war noch nicht alles! Here's the full interview - hier geht's zum ganzen Interview!
