Experimental pop/rock/electronic/hip-hop artists Frost Children (from New York) and Haru Nemuri (from Tokyo) released their collaborative EP Soul Kiss last fall on True Panther, the record label that puts out Frost Children’s music. In the months since the EP’s release, things have not gone well between the Frost Children and Nemuri camps, and this week that conflict is spilling into the public eye.
Thursday, Nemuri posted a lengthy statement to her Instagram story and X account detailing her complaints against Frost Children. In a message she said she wrote on Dec. 29, Nemuri says Frost Children exerted control over their mutual tour plans, then pulled out of the tour with Nemuri when they got a better offer, then ghosted her. She had other concerns, too, like the use of an unapproved selfie instead of her many professional promo shots. Here’s the full text:
All the work we did has been released, so I would like to write my honest feelings at the end. First of all, we were supposed to do the tour for it and talked about the concrete plan. The cities I wanted to go to were different from the cities Frost wanted to go to, and we adjusted it according to their wishes. After the tour schedule was finalized, their agent sent a message to my agent. “We got the better offer to do the other tour, so we’re going with it.” I couldn’t believe it because | had already changed my schedule and made the dates available to do the tour with them. And even the two from Frost Children didn’t say anything to me directly. It’s really unbelievable!
After that, they didn’t allow me to use all the thousands of promo photos for promotion, while they used a selfie without any permission (I didn’t care about it though), they uploaded the album on Bandcamp even though we can’t sell it with area limited (they can sell it in the US and Europe but can’t do it in Asia due to the contract), they made the album artwork available on Instagram. They did all of this without any prior discussion and mutual agreement. Nothing but laughter. I couldn’t stand it and sent an angry message in a group chat a month ago, but the people from the label (True Panther) and two from Frost haven’t said anything to me yet. I asked them how they would improve this bad way of doing business. And today (| wrote this on 29.12.2024) I got a message from Angel: “I’m happy that our cooperation is going well! Wtf? I am just as proud of the music work itself, except for their lame way of communication.Anyway, I’m so disappointed with them.
©thefrostchildren ©truepanther
There’s also a message dated March 15 in which she claims she couldn’t stand the music she made with Frost Children, among other remarks:
And they also sent us the design of the CD booklet (with my Japanese lyrics translated into English via Google, actually messed up), we adjusted it, fixed it and sent it back. We hadn’t checked the final data, asked them how it went and had no response from either the label or the members of Frost. Today I found out that they already made it and sent it out to people who bought it through their stories. What the hell is this? In The Reason I wrote and made this public was because I couldn’t help but think that they really looked down on my team from the bottom of their heart. I feel very sorry for the people who love our collaborative music, but I really couldn’t stand it.
Frost Children offered their response today, arguing that Nemuri’s label, Sony, had initially offered them exploitative terms, her team was unresponsive to their suggested edits, Nemuri ghosted them, the duo wasn’t comfortable with the official promo shots, they made all but one of the changes to the CD requested by Nemuri’s team (and had what they think is a good reason for that). Here’s what they wrote:
We didn’t want to have to do this publicly, but due to the escalating false narratives being spread by Haru Nemuri, we need to clear the air.
We had such a great time making this collab EP. We are proud of the music we made together and are still grateful for the surprising genuine musical connection we made. The last time we talked to Haru and her team we had invited them to Angel’s DJ set in Shibuya with a note that Angel was really happy about how the record was being received. They didn’t respond. So that’s why we’re a bit surprised at what she posted yesterday because we have nothing but happiness in my heart about this record.
There were a lot of negotiations between our label and Haru’s because the original terms her label (Sony) sent us were extremely exploitative. Her team was unresponsive to the edits we requested, which set the timeline back.
We are equally disappointed that the tour wasn’t able to happen, which we turned down because the routing they suggested would have lead to huge costs and a deficit that we could not afford at that time.
We were not comfortable with the majority of the press photos that were taken, so we asked that those not be included in press releases or artwork. We could go into reasons for this, but ultimately all artists should have the agency to choose how they want to be represented publically. For what it’s worth, we think the compromise we made about images worked.
In regards to Bandcamp, True Panther sends the royalties from sales in their territories (which is standard with split territories). As requested by Haru’s team, we took the project down from Bandcamp immediately it was available for a very very brief time and had only generated $200 globally.
In regard to the CDs, we made all their edits, including correcting the translation of all Japanese and English lyrics, after waiting for notes for months. It’s plain to see in any of the total 200 cds that were made. The only request that was not implemented was changing the album title to all caps. We chose not to implement this because the album title wasn’t in all caps digitally.
We love the EP and are sad that it has come to this.
Nemuri has responded in turn by sharing screen shots of her text communication with Frost Children. She adds, “If you don’t wanna go on the tour due to the cost after you decided to go on, you should have explained it and apologized. If you don’t want it in publicly, you or other staffs should have answered my questions directly. EVEN ONCE.” What a mess.
I really can’t endure it so sorry pic.twitter.com/uK96iFbFaA
— 春ねむり HARU NEMURI (She/Her) (@haru_nemuri) April 3, 2025
— frost chile (@FrostChildren) April 4, 2025
If you don’t wanna go on the tour due to the cost after you decided to go on, you should have explained it and apologized.
If you don’t want it in publicly, you or other staffs should have answered my questions directly. EVEN ONCE.@FrostChildren
— 春ねむり HARU NEMURI (She/Her) (@haru_nemuri) April 4, 2025
https://t.co/q7yx6dBYT8 https://t.co/TiYhrb5sFD
— 春ねむり HARU NEMURI (She/Her) (@haru_nemuri) April 4, 2025
