‘Silence is punk as fuck’: Frost Children and Ninajirachi go head-to-head

In an interview with Arca for his Dazed spring 2026 cover story, 2hollis declared that pop music is currently undergoing a transformation. “There was a long time of very down-the-middle, put-together pop music, [but now] people want to hear something more avant-garde,” the “Jeans” singer announced. The same day that these words were published, however, two architects of this new era joined a call with Dazed for a head-to-head of their own: Australian producer-vocalist Ninajirachi and Missouri-born sibling duo Frost Children.

At the time of the call, Ninajirachi and Frost Children had swapped places. Frost Children’s Lulu and Angel had just touched down in Sydney for their Australia leg of their SISTER album tour, while Nina found herself in LA for a writing session. “I feel like that’s how our lives have always been – on opposite sides of the world,” shrugs Angel. In fact, the trio have only met in person once, but they still describe themselves as close “homies”, having supported each other’s music for years, and, most recently, exchanged remixes of the title tracks on each of their previous albums: Ninajirachi’s “Fuck My Computer” and Frost Children’s “Sister”. 

Still, it is precisely these distance-collapsing digital friendships that has given rise to the changes that 2hollis speaks of. Much like hollis, Ninajirachi and Frost Children describe themselves as having been “raised by the internet”, and the trio laugh at the idea that, just 15 years ago, ‘brostep’ pioneer Skrillex was shamed for treating a laptop like an instrument – today, it’s quite literally impossible to find a chart hit that a laptop hasn’t touched. “We’ve only ever known the post-Skrillex world,” says Nina.

It’s a world that the trio, each with their own laptops in hand, are thriving in. Raised in a golden age of electronic music – from the birth of dubstep and EDM right down to the rise of so-called ‘hyperpop’ – all three of these artists are uniquely poised to bridge the dance underground with the mainstream. Skrillex-like drops and glitched-out transitions abound throughout Nina’s recent “Sisters” remix, for example, but it is also underpinned by an unmistakable pop flavour that even retired parents could get behind. Together, along with names like Underscores, Umru, Mechatok and more, Frost Children and Ninajirachi are realising a world in which pop music is fast, DIY and, above all, digital. 

Below, the trio of pop interlopers speak on their recent collaborations, their thoughts on the term ‘hyperpop’, and what they describe as the “shifting relativity of what is hyper”. 

How did you first meet? 

Angel: I guess we’ve only technically met once in person. We did a session in LA, but, for the remixes and stuff, everything’s just been remote, over Twitter and Instagram DMs, Google Meets…

How did you first encounter each other’s music, then? 

Angel: I saw Nina’s Girledm.com website and I was like, ‘That’s such an awesome website name!’ Obviously, I started listening.

Ninajirachi: I first saw you guys play a show back when we didn’t know each other. I was just a fan. It was the Fool’s Gold show in 2023. I was with my friend Bible Money, and she was putting me onto a lot of music. 

You’ve all been described as hyperpop at one point. What do you think of that label?

Lulu: It was a name given by Spotify, but that also doesn’t mean that it wasn’t and isn’t real. It’s not like I don’t claim that community because I feel that all three of us were really built up online through it over our first couple of years. But I also think that it doesn’t have much shelf life because the moment that people like Spotify want to try to put it into a bottle like that, it becomes less fun for the actual artists to manage that title and that sound.

Angel: It is funny how hyperpop retroactively went from editorial playlist back into artists self-identifying with it. Like, you don’t hear indie artists saying, ‘Oh, I make [Spotify-coined term] lorem music!’ But, yeah, I really don’t feel anything about that label anymore. It used to piss me off a lot, but now I’m just like whatever. People will say what they want. In the end, I think it pushed us to make stuff that we wouldn't normally have made. It’s a net positive. 

Ninajirachi: In Australia in 2020, where the scene was a lot smaller than the US or the UK, I kind of liked it. I thought that this word was the broader music community’s way of understanding forward-thinking or interesting music. But I would never introduce myself like, ‘Hi, I’m Ninajirachi, and I make hyperpop’.

Lulu: Before the pandemic, people would call Sophie hyperpop. I think there were certain eras where the term was being misused. 

Angel: You wouldn’t call Sophie hyperpop now. 

Lulu: No, I would just call it PC music, even though she definitely bred hyperpop and directly caused it, I don’t know if she would claim [hyperpop].

“I think that there’s only really two genres: pop music and texture music”

Do you see yourself more as pop music, then?

Angel: Yeah, we’ve always said pop music. I think that there are only really two genres: pop music and texture music. There’s pop music which has arrangement, catchiness and some sort of cultural gel that makes it digestible to the average Joe. Then there’s texture music, which is like ambient or like jazz, which is supposed to be more free and also represents something about the human spirit. That’s how I think about music. I never think about hyperpop. I don’t think anything’s out of bounds to use in a song.

Ninajirachi: It’s also a generational thing, in the sense that a sound might be ‘hyper’ to someone, but, to a baby born today, that’s just music. The charts have all been permeated by experimental producers. 

Angel: That’s very true, though, because what was hyper in 2020 is now the base layer. Imagine a 13-year-old whose first song that they memorised from the radio is ‘Gnarly’ by Katseye. They’d be like, ‘That’s not hyper, that’s just how songs sound’. Then, imagine they listen to SOPHIE. They’d be like, ‘That’s just normal music, it sounds like Katseye’. Now, you have people like 2slimey and shit who are really pushing the boundaries of how much you can distort an 808 and how much you can be indecipherable. I think it’s really cool, actually.

It’s funny because 2slimey clearly comes from more of a rap lineage than PC Music, yet seems to be ending up at a similarly maximalist destination. 

Angel: It’s crazy, the shifting relativity of what is hyper. I remember listening to ‘Die Lit’ by Playboi Carti when I was in high school and I was like ‘You can’t go any harder than this, this is the hardest rap music I’ve ever heard!’ Now, it literally sounds like lo-fi hip-hop.

Lulu: I still need to be sold on 2slimey. I’ll like it for like three seconds, and then, halfway through the song, I’m like, ‘I need to kill this with fire’. 

Why do you think music might be tending towards more hyper sounds?

Ninajirachi: It might just be the advancement of technology. Even with the Beatles, weren’t there songs where they would be like ‘Fuck it, pan that whole track to the left’? Like, that was so edgy for the time. There were such vast limitations on recording back then, and now we have Ableton, and we can literally do anything. It’s almost like the most hyper thing to do is to restrain and be silent.

Angel: Yes, that’s what I was going to say! That was the exact realisation we had that made Hearth Room our softer album. We were like, ‘This is punk as fuck!’ Like, having a really beautiful guitar song is punk as fuck. I think Sister topped it, but we always think about this: cap the Ableton project at a certain amount of layers. A song doesn’t need to do everything.

Lulu: One of my friends called it DAW [Digital Audio Workstation] slop. Songs that are full, like 110 tracks on Ableton plus like four OTTs [effect] on everything.

“Hatred and love are the same thing. That’s a universal human truth”

Ten years ago, EDM was looked down upon by music critics. But now, through artists like yourselves, it seems to find itself at the cutting edge of music. Where do you think this cycle came from? 

Lulu: I’ve seen people saying this, too. I feel like people, especially critics, don’t hold electronic dance music to the same tier as rap music or indie music. There are so many amazing albums that we grew up with that got completely dismissed as just a ‘random club tape’. Like, Avicii can have the best written song ever, and a really cool drop, and both things can be true.

Angel: People’s hatred and love are the same thing. That’s a universal human truth. If you’re like, ‘I fucking hate that thing’, it actually means that you have a soft spot for it. I found this with myself too. I think that's why it becomes a cycle, because I don’t think anyone ever truly hates something their whole life.

Ninajirachi: It’s also a generational thing. Us three weren’t born into a world without Skrillex. He has always existed for us. I see memes that are over a decade old where it's like ‘No, Skrillex, a laptop isn’t an instrument’ [Laughs] It’s like, wow, I can’t believe people used to be for real about that because, now, we don’t know any different. Also, when you’re a kid, you don’t care about cultural cringe. You just listen to music that makes you feel good, and you don’t care why. Like, you hear a super saw or a build-up and a drop and you’re like, ‘Wow, that makes me feel epic!’

Maybe it’s also because the critics reviewing our music now were also born into the same context that we were. Some of them are our age who’ve only ever known the post-Skrillex world.

Angel: It’s true. I felt really cool listening to Deadmau5. To a 28-year-old at that time who was into dance music, they probably saw how certain elements of electro house and techno were fused and sensationalised as some sellout shit. But, I’m a 13-year-old in St. Louis, Missouri, and so this is the coolest shit I’ve ever heard. I’m only learning his references now.

Ninajirachi: Interesting, maybe it’s a small town thing, because I’m also from a small town. Maybe your access point has an influence on your tastes, too.

Turning to the “Sisters” remix you did, Nina, childhood plays a key role in the lyrics, too. 

Ninajirachi: I just thought ‘sibling love’ was such a cool prompt. Lyrically, it was just pouring out. I have a little brother, and I love him. He was my sister in the song.

Angel: Obviously, Lulu and I grew up together and we’ve always been pretty close. So, when we were making the album Sister, it felt natural to us to talk about those themes. It’s this source of communicative power that we have through music. When you’re a kid, you don't know that other music is out there, so everything’s like the coolest thing ever. That is what EDM achieves for people of all ages; it’s this beautiful gel that makes you feel young, you know? There’s a universal human appeal to it. If you’re not too snobbish and let yourself be taken by it, it’s really powerful. It’s vulnerable, it’s emotional, but it’s also intense and dancey. That’s what childhood is like.

Also, we never said this in the press, but we just asked for a remix of anything on our album, and Nina sent back a fully-written verse on ‘Sisters’. I was like, ‘Wait, this is amazing’. I was shocked to hear such prescient and cool melody writing. Do you want to explore that side of yourself more, Nina, or are you more like, ‘Fuck it: DJ mode’?

Ninajirachi: Oh, thank you. I was so nervous to send it to you. I really want to keep making music that works for shows. That was something I focused on a lot for my album that I was really happy with. What about you? Are you going more maximalist after Sister or more restrained?

Lulu: I think Sister was a bit more of an ode to EDM than our other music. We are just now starting all the music for the next era, and I don’t want to just be like, ‘OK, now every song we make has to have a buildup and a drop’.

Angel: I love buildups and drops…

Lulu: Yeah. But we’ve had an entire career before that album of things that didn’t necessarily even have those at all. So, I want to save the buildups and the drops for things that really matter and then explore faster tempos. We’re working on this thing right now that’s 165 BPM. It feels a bit fresher because I’ve been existing in 130 for a couple of years now.

Angel: We played it last night, actually. It was our second time ever playing it, and people were like, ‘Woah!’

Lulu: It’s more like hard style.

Angel: It reminds me of our early shit. We’re going back to our roots.