The Frost Children are the sibling duo electrifying NYC's nightlife

Continuing the history of giving creatives a platform to showcase their creative talent, the 2022 edition of the Dazed 100, in partnership with Coach, taps into individuals and collectives who represent a new era of the internet and are pushing culture forward. Channelling Generation 3.0, this year’s list includes a more expansive list of categories – ranging from tech innovators to entrepreneurs, in music, gaming, beauty, and beyond.

Featured on the Dazed Winter 2022 issue cover, Frost Children are a hyper-pop duo made up of siblings Lulu and Angel Prost from St Louis, Missouri. Currently based in New York City, the duo started out making music separately, before coming together in 2019 and laying the foundations for the fizzing hyperpop they’re now known for. Now their versatile style sits somewhere between hyperpop, electric and indie. Speaking on the impact of the internet on the band’s growth and progression, Angel said “Since the dawn of streaming, music can just be uploaded right onto the internet immediately, and that level of intimacy and connection with an audience even furthers this feeling of altered perceptions.”

Below we spoke to Lulu and Angel about their inspirations and the internet.

What is your creative practice/s? And how is it connected to a new era of the internet?

Lulu Prost: I love keeping a beginner’s mindset with the creative stuff. I find it easier to make stuff I genuinely enjoy when I'm using minimal effort to make something totally new. People’s attention span on the internet (us included) is very short so the time making something should also be somewhat brief. Nothing should be sitting unreleased for longer than a year.

Do you have multiple creative outlets? Please explain a little bit about your multi-hyphenate creativity and life?

Angel Prost: My main creative outlet is music and performing, but I really enjoy writing and posting long-form text posts on socials these days, too. I also have a bi-weekly newsletter written in a genre I like to call “Deception Poetry”. I think they’re all related— I like to be hyper-online and constantly bombarding my brain with stuff. It all feeds into the music. But also the inverse is needed: time for meditation and complete Purity of the mind. You can’t enjoy the Psycho-ness of the internet without some clear-headed resets and mico-cleanses. 

Tell us about your creative journey so far? How did you get here? What difficulties did you face along the way? Have you had to reinvent yourself? - if so, then how? 

Lulu Prost: I used to always get writer’s block because I was under the idea that your first releases have to be your best. Once I started to realize that I won’t get better until I just put stuff out into the world and try what works for me, I’ve found a level of consistency and balance in my craft. Now every project feels more like practice for the next one. If you attach yourself to a project for too long you are bound to hate it. This is also why collaborating is a super healthy creative practice. You gotta send the early versions of things to your peers no matter how cringe you think it is.

How do you express courage and confidence through your creative practice? 

Angel Prost: We express courage and confidence through our music and performance practice through commitment to the bit. Music, after uploaded, will stay uploaded, even if our sound changes, and things should continue to be added to the unfathomable cacophony of content over a lifetime. In an age where deleting is common, the act of Maintaining is punk.

And how do you think your creativity and work inspires confidence? 

Angel Prost: I think loudly being yourself on the internet, even if that means performing some kind of online persona, is inspiring because it shows that receiving hate can’t really hurt you if you’re happy with yourself. And if you’re happy with what you’re doing, and are your own biggest fan, who can argue with that? 

How do you use your creative practice to explore many expressions of yourself and identity? Do you think the internet, and web 3.0, can be used to do so in new ways? 

Angel Prost: Music has always been the go-to route of expression because of its inherent performative nature. Even if you’re writing something extremely Real and from the heart, the fact that you’re putting it to song gives you space from that feeling or experience, and immediately become healing. Putting your ideas to song also weirdly strips it from you, giving it to the world instead. Since the dawn of streaming, music can just be uploaded right onto the internet immediately, and that level of intimacy and connection with an audience even furthers this feeling of altered perceptions. Music and art can be Enjoyed faster and louder and sillier and sadder and braver. 

You're part of a brave new generation leading a new internet era. How are you breaking convention in your creativity and approach? 

Angel Prost: Frost Children are highly involved in the physical music scene of NYC and abroad, and I think it’s really important to maintain some kind of presence in the physical world in addition to online. People will say our music sounds very “online”, which I think is true, but in the end, dance music should be danced to, physically, with other people. I think being internet artists with an exaggerated physical presence (shows, events, Nightlife in general) is extremely Honest. It revives a kind of music world-building in a way that doesn’t read too overly nostalgic or sonically resemble the Music of scenes past.

Who lit the way for you in terms of inspiration? How do you hope others learn from you? 

Lulu Prost: Skrillex and Virtual Riot. Seeing someone create the craziest shit from hotel rooms with just a pair of headphones was so inspiring to me in high school. I am also very grateful for Virtual Riot’s youtube tutorials that really got me into sound design on this synth program called Xfer Serum. The idea that you could make anything from a simple sine or saw wave is still the most incredible thing to me

Angel Prost: Jonathon Richman, Gary Wilson, Guided by Voices, Jeffrey Lewis, deadmau5, Andy Kaufman, Weird Al Yankovic. Artist who Maintain over a lifetime, straddle the line between sincerity and “irony” (hot take is that Irony doesn’t exist), and just people who are caricatures of themselves. I hope others can learn by the work that Frost Children contributes, in the music itself, and in the context its presented within. I can’t wait for how people will react to our 50th album. 

What does Web 3.0 mean to you?

Lulu Prost: I don’t really know anything about Web 3.0 and most people that have told me about it are very scary people.

Angel Prost: I think it’s important to remember to rely on yourself, and your own beating Heart. The best work comes from human-ness, and technology is only a means to an end. Besides, have you heard of Web 4.0?

How does web 3.0 have the potential to make our lives better?

Lulu Prost: I love the internet and it should be creator friendly because that’s what it runs on.

Angel Prost: I love the idea of a world where artists are all happy and healthy, and creatively fulfilled.

Check out Lulu and Angel’s picks from Coach’s collection below.