Frost by Angela Winter

ABOUT FROST

“My poems . . . are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless. Ever since infancy I have had the habit of leaving my blocks carts chairs and such like ordinaries where people would be pretty sure to fall forward over them in the dark. Forward, you understand, and in the dark.”
—Robert Frost

I conceived Frost in early 2019, when I took up piano and music-theory lessons with musician and producer Tim Carless, who’d just produced my debut album, Hollow. As part of our explorations of diatonic harmony, Pythagorean tuning, and modal music, Tim asked me to write songs based on exercises he assigned me. In composing my songs, I wanted to focus on learning music theory versus writing words (which takes me forever), so I looked for poetry that I could easily repurpose into song lyrics. That’s when I learned that Robert Frost’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book New Hampshire had just entered the public domain.

I knew little about Frost’s poetry, save for a glancing familiarity with “The Road Not Taken,” “Fire and Ice,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” My sense was that his poems, though brilliantly written, probably weren’t for me. To my ears, Frost’s lines sounded too plainspoken, too filled with stories about his New England neighbors, too specifically American. But my desire for poetic lyrics led me to check out an original 1923 edition of his book New Hampshire from the library, just to see whether any of its poems would suit.

I was pleased to find “Fire and Ice” and “Stopping by Woods” in the book, alongside a few stark and wintry poems that intrigued me. I was especially taken with “Dust of Snow,” which told of a transformative moment its narrator experienced under a hemlock tree. I decided to try the poem’s brief lines as lyrics for my first modal composition, which at that point I was calling “Pythagoras for Mice” because whenever I played it on the piano, mice in the attic would get excited and start scurrying around overhead. My singing of Frost’s words did not seem to dampen their enthusiasm for the song.

In all, I set six poems from New Hampshire to music. As I sang each song and committed them to memory, I began to perceive deeper shades of meaning in their lines. They took root inside my mind and heart and began to grow, and I realized that Frost was not as straightforward as he initially seemed.

I intended to record the songs as an EP that year, but life had other ideas. My estranged father died, and when I got home from his memorial service, I discovered that my main source of consulting income was gone, which meant no money for recording, or for much else. My life basically fell apart, and I shelved the recording project by necessity. Then the pandemic arrived. This ushered in a new, DIY way of working—also by necessity—which helped lead to an experimental foray into ambient and noise music. During lockdown, I learned how to record, mix, and produce my own music as I moved away from lyrics-based compositions toward wordless, textural sonic explorations that seemed to better fit the nebulosity of the time.

For all these reasons, the Frost songs wound up sitting on a shelf for several years, and I almost didn’t record them. I couldn’t seem to find a way to align them with where my music was headed; but neither would they seem to let me go. A few people, especially my husband, asked if I would record them and hoped aloud that I would. I wondered if there was a way to reinvigorate the music, or at least my own enthusiasm for it, by creating new, additional tracks for the album that were inspired by other poems in the book. Was it possible to set ambient music and noise improvisations next to more traditional-sounding piano and voice compositions? Could music from the past live beside sonics that suggest the future? I began to hope that looking at the present from these two directions at once would make the album’s shape become clearer.

As I considered how to make Frost, I read more deeply in New Hampshire, along with some of Frost’s letters and lectures on writing. I read about Frost himself: about how his witty and charismatic social disposition differed greatly from his more reserved, starchy writer persona; about the many mental illnesses and deaths in his immediate family; about his self-confidence and his sorrow. I read about how most people misread “The Road Not Taken.” The more I read, the more I felt as though I was falling forward in the dark.

In the dark, I found graveyards, apple orchards, and steeple bells. I found two witches and an attic full of bones. I found a man who set his farmhouse on fire for the insurance money, which he used to buy a telescope to “satisfy a life-long curiosity / about our place among the infinities.” He named the telescope “the Star-splitter.” I found Saturn and Mars and Jupiter. I found cosmic wonder juxtaposed with all-too-human society. I fell forward into what this album became, stumbling in the dark all the way.


THANKS TO

my patrons—for your generous direct support of my art, which makes living as a musician more sustainable—thank you, thank you, thank you, dear friends!

Jack Chuter—for your brilliant audio mastering, big ears, and thoughtful company—I learned so much as we worked together, and I delighted in our musical conversations along the way

Wes Naman—for sweating it out with me in a ballet studio on a 100-degree summer day to create wintry, beautiful images for this album—your art is dreamy gorgeous, and I loved hanging out with you

Kent Swecker—for your quick, keen designs, your humor, and your generosity—I loved working with you, as always

Corey Bauer—for your sweet, sweet vinyl cuts and awesome service

the audio angels on freesound.org—for sharing your field recordings for remixing via the creative commons—many thanks for your contributions to this album

readers of Auspices, community on Bandcamp, show attendees, and listeners across the globe—for your company and fellowship, which lifts my wings and energizes my creativity

my music mates, friends, family, and goddesses—for your kindness, love, and presence—I’m deeply grateful for you

Ted Johnson and John Shannon—for lessons in ones and zeros, mAs and dBs, signal paths, effects pedals, and sonic spacewalking

Tim Carless—for encouraging me to record and produce my own music and for endless piano assignments (“Good. Now arrange your song in two more keys.”)—miss you, mate

Lynn A. Robinson—for my first piano lessons as a child, for your gift of a beautiful keyboard, and for supporting me through all my years with presence, encouragement, and love

Robert Frost—for your “lover’s quarrel with the world,” which has utterly changed me

Brent Winter—for making my heart sing and this album possible

Ambient, ritual, and experimental music for thresholds, where synths, keys, and strings meet otherworldly vocals, shimmering drones, and overtones.

“Beautifully haunting.” —Bandcamp Daily

“Stunning.” —Foxy Digitalis

“Spellbinding” —Lost and Found Sounds

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