An interview by Erik Kowalski that appeared in Milk magazine sometime in the summer of 1997. (I’m not sure of the exact date.)

edith frost: beauty’s barest elements

"He no longer loves me / I’m supposed to forget about him / I was just a harbor / A temporary love on loan…" sings Edith Frost on her new, debut full-length Calling Over Time (Drag City), a masterpiece of gently whispered beauty, a lullaby woven within gorgeous, minimal instrumentation. And while the music sways in and out of candle light, the themes of her songs revolve around the tension of love and love lost — sad, slow, and compelling. As her voice drifts about lazily, Edith Frost realizes that she is, like many of us, caught in the middle, diving in and out of other people’s worlds while maintaining her individuality, caught in the ebb and flow of intimate emotion. She is, in every sense of the word, an angel.

"There are songs about my relationships, but most are situation-type songs as I’m very voyeuristic and harvest ideas from other people’s business," explains Frost. "So they are snapshots of people that I have known and loved through the years. Sometimes they are about a particular person, and if you ask me, I can say, ‘Well, this is about so and so,’ which might seem funny." In the end, however, the impressions left behind by such observations seem strikingly private, as if we are led to eavesdrop on her world, too, wondering where she came from and hoping that she will stay in view forever.

Edith Frost is a big city girl. Born in San Antonio. Lived in Austin, New York, Guadalajara, Chicago. She’s never been camping. Went through ten years of different hair colors, is a big Cocteau Twins and Alice Cooper fan. But, most importantly, Edith has been playing music for more than 15 years, working in a private world shared by her boyfriend. "I’ve always been into music. I sang, and got a guitar when I was about 14. I’ve taken different lessons throughout my life. Sometimes I think I took many different lessons with too many instruments, never getting really all that skilled at one thing. The only instrument I can almost pass on is guitar, though I still can’t play a lead. I didn’t start accompanying myself until about five years ago. Still, I can’t imagine not playing music; I’ll do it until I die."

Edith grew up with a musician and had the support of her father as well, both fundamental experiences which inevitably aided in her growth as an artist. "My old boyfriend was a great musician," continues Frost. "An all-around wonderful guitarist, keyboardist, and programmer. So we had a home studio where we shared the equipment. We had an eight-track with a patch bay and a big board, with various keyboards and samplers."

A lot of Frost’s earlier songs were done with complicated gear. It wasn’t all tape decks with built-in microphones, which provided another important lesson. "I had gotten my first Apple computer in 1982 as a hand-me-down from my dad, and he had heard of these keyboards that could hook up to computers and was really excited, so he bought me one. This was way before the advent of MIDI technology, and I kept that thing for so long, now it’s useless. So my father helped me a lot, and my boyfriend was a maniac about music. I did vocals on stuff with him occasionally, and would sometimes work on my own, but usually I was trying to get him to write the stuff, something I could put vocals on. And I was really into the Cocteau Twins, so I would be like, ‘Make some really pretty songs that I can sing on top of.’ We did a couple of things that sounded really eerie, one which is very Twin Peaks-esque. We did some very geeky stuff back then."

Since moving to Chicago, Edith has released an EP on Drag City, a label she admits was mysterious to her at first. "When I first started working with them, I was a little embarrassed because I had no idea who they were, and asked them to send me some stuff from their label. Those guys are wonderful, almost like family, yet we don’t hang out and socialize because they work like dogs and are 100% committed to what they do. And they’re not getting rich on this. They live for the music, and I really trust them." The EP contains Frost’s favorite songs from her repertoire, including 1986′s "Waiting Room," a delicate, playful-yet-tense masterpiece which offers a subtle contrast to her recent work.

Calling Over Time is one of the best albums of this year, uniting the talents of such notables as Jim O’Rourke (recording and mixing) and Sean O’Hagan (keyboards). Edith has an incredible style and songwriting ability, and the songs she creates are as seductive as the promise of summer. And through it all — by the sadness and loneliness of the difficult days we sometimes carry — she sings to every one of us, satisfying our need for warmth while responding to her own. Which is what music is all about, really.