Frost*

After an 8 year silence, 2016 finally sees the release of the long awaited 3rd album from Frost*, “Falling Satellites”.

The brainchild of keyboard player Jem Godfrey, Frost* released their first album, “Milliontown” to critical acclaim in 2006. Then as now, Godfrey is joined by long term collaborator John Mitchell (Lonely Robot/It Bites) on guitar and vocals plus Nathan King (Level 42) on bass and drummer Craig Blundell (Steven Wilson). “This line-up has been in existence since 2010 and is now the longest version of Frost* that there’s ever been”, says Godfrey, “so it’s strange to think that this is the first time we’ve recorded an album together”.

There are 11 songs in total with the final 6 songs forming a 32 minute long suite called “Sunlight”. Within this collection of songs comes an unexpected guest appearance from none other than Grammy nominated guitar legend Joe Satriani.

“I contributed a keyboard solo to the Big Big Train album “The Underfall Yard”, explains Godfrey, “this was heard by XTC’s Dave Gregory who in turn knew ex-Zappa man Mike Keneally who needed a keyboard dep for some Joe Satriani shows he couldn’t do in the UK in 2010. I did those and this in turn led to me playing keys for both Joe and Steve Vai for their entire G3 European Tour in 2012, so that wee Big Big Train keyboard solo gave me back rather more than I was expecting. Joe is a fantastic human being so to capture some of his spirit on the album is a great honour for me”.

“Falling Satellites” is still unmistakably a continuation of the Frost* sound, but with new instruments and textures added, such as The Chapman Railboard which Godfrey has learned to play recently. “The Railboard is a descendant of the iconic Chapman Stick”, Godfrey explains, “but it’s made of aluminium rather than wood so it has a very glassy, tubular sound which is quite unique. Not only that, but I had a custom tuning set in 5ths and octaves designed in collaboration with Emmett Chapman, he thought I was mad, but it makes sense to me as a keyboard player. Most people play it like a guitar and tap it, but I play it horizontally like a keyboard and attack it with e-Bows and mallets and stuff, it’s brought a whole new sound to some of the songs like “Numbers” and “Closer To The Sun””.

As to the album’s theme… “It’s about chance and life. The astronomically unlikely chance of being conceived to start with and then surviving to old age”, Godfrey says, “the near impossible odds of the things that happen to you in life benefitting you rather than killing you are gigantic and yet it happens all the time. It’s about celebrating how extraordinarily rare the period of us being alive is and how we should take more time to appreciate it while we’re here. We’re a long time dead at either end of this brief little flicker.”