UK progressive rockers Frost* will release Life In The Wires – their brand new double concept album – on 18th October via InsideOutMusic.
“Every prog band worth their salt really should do a double album, shouldn’t they?” queried Frost* frontman Jem Godfrey. “We’ve always kind of had this idea of wanting to do one. So, I sat down last summer and thought, well, I’m just gonna have to get my head down and go for it.”
Ahead of that, and out now, is new single ‘Idiot Box’ with an accompanying Christian Rios-directed video for the track that you can check out here at RAMzine.
Frontman Jem Godfrey said of the single: “The cover of our album Day And Age was five figures standing with megaphones, blasting out their message as loud as possible. The observation was that the world loves to broadcast now, but isn’t so keen on listening. As Life In The Wires is a continuation of Day And Age so ‘Idiot Box’ is a further exploration of that idea. At this point in the story, the Meso are burning with a quiet rage because Naio’s more interested in listening than talking. He has a different opinion and any difference of opinion must be eradicated! That’s the trouble with living in this day and age, the writing’s on the wall. Thankfully he’s got one eye skywards and is not a boy that stands still.
“Christian Rios has delivered another neon dream glimpse into Naio’s world with the fantastic video that he managed to complete as Hurricane Helene was bearing down on him last week so serious kudos to him for that.”
Stream the single & pre-order the album here and check out the video below.
It follows ‘Moral & Consequence’, the band’s last single, and a song that appears later in the story that unfolds on Life In The Wires. Available digitally, you can check out the video here at RAMzine.
Godfrey commented on the track: “’Moral And Consequence’ is a song of two halves, you’ll never guess what each section is called… In 2008, on our second album Experiments In Mass Appeal, I sang: ‘The ideal and the innocence, the moral and the consequence. Core desire, it’s a real Livewire, setting my life on fire, oh it’s unreal’. It’s not a sequel to the song from 2008, but at the same time it is. It’s a bit complicated, all will be revealed on the new album.”
Back in August, the band launched of the first track taken from the album, the first part of the album’s epic title track, ‘Life In The Wires, Part 1’m with Godfrey explaining: “It’s actually a continuation from Day And Age.”
“The first track on the new album starts with the end of the last track from that album ‘Repeat to Fade’, where the static comes up and a voice says ‘Can you hear me?’. I remember putting that in when we did Day And Age as a possible little hook for the future; a character somewhere out there in Day And Age land trying to be heard. What does he want to say? Can anybody hear him? Day And Age kind of sets up the world that this character lives in and ‘Life In The Wires’ tells his story”.
The story revolves around the main character Naio, an aimless kid heading for a meaningless future in an A.I. run world. He hears an old DJ talking on the ancient AM radio his mother once gave him and decides to trace the source of the signal and find Livewire to see if there’s a better future out there. However, the All Seeing Eye is less than impressed at this bid for independent thought and fights back. Soon Naio finds himself pursued across the country by an outraged mob as he tries to locate the home of Livewire and his freedom. Tune in at www.lifeinthewires.com and see if you can hear Livewire on the radio. The video for this was created by Christian Rios/Ray of Light Films.
Helping create this parallel world, is the “classic” Frost* lineup of guitarist John Mitchell, bassist Nathan King, and returning drummer Craig Blundell.
Fans of the band’s masterful debut album Milliontown (2006) will enjoy the band revisiting the style that made that debut album one of the most successful prog rock albums of the last 20 years, a fact that was not lost on Godfrey as he was writing this new record.
“With Day And Age, we made it a very specific point: we’re not doing any solos, we’ll do clever arrangements. And we enjoyed that discipline, but this time I thought it might be good to row back on that position a bit. Plus, I wanted to have a little bit of a nod to Milliontown with this album, because it’s been nearly 20 years since Milliontown came out and I’m still proud of it. The 15-minute title track has a few of those Milliontown moments in it which were great fun to do again.”
Life In The Wires will be available as a limited 2CD, gatefold 180g 2LPand as a digital album, with subtle difference across the three formats for added interest. The album features artwork design by Carl Glover, who also designed the cover of Day And Age.
The full track listing on CD1 is ‘Skywaving’, ‘Life in the Wires, Part 1’, ‘This House Of Winter’, ‘The Solid State Orchestra’, ‘Evaporator’, ‘Strange World’, ‘Idiot Box’ and ‘Absent Friends’. On CD2 you’ll find the tracks ‘School (Introducing The All Seeing Eye)’, ‘Propergander’, ‘Sign Of Life’, ‘Moral And Consequence’, ‘Life in the Wires, Part 2’ and ‘Starting Fires’.
You can stream the singles and order the album here.
