From Prog to Classical to Electronic: Frozen Inertia’s Bold 2025 Evolution

Frozen Inertia has always existed slightly left of the map, a band built on curiosity, experimentation, and a refusal to color inside the lines of traditional rock.

The US-based duo, with roots stretching from San Francisco to Akron, blends baritone guitars, accordion, synths, and inventive percussion into a sound that feels both strange and cinematic. Led by Timothy Graves and Brad Palmer, the band has built a reputation for crafting indie experimental rock that bends toward the unexpected: college-radio charting releases, BBC Radio 6 airplay, soundtrack placements, and even a science song embraced by classrooms across the country.

But 2025 marked a turning point. With Reflectivity, the band delivered what they consider their strongest and most cohesive artistic statement yet, a sprawling, genre-melding record that pulls from classical arrangements, big-band textures, electronic ambience, and prog-rock tension. The album features seventeen global collaborators, yet it manages to feel like a single, unified thought: eclectic, unpredictable, but unmistakably Frozen Inertia.

Despite not dominating college radio rotation the way their previous record did, Reflectivity has found an unusual kind of success: every single track has gotten airplay somewhere. That alone says everything about the album’s long-tail impact, it may not be built for mass rotation, but it resonates deeply with listeners who stumble into its world. The record feels like a curated museum, each track its own exhibit, its own mood, its own odd beauty.

Outside of the music, Frozen Inertia’s year was defined by visual experimentation. Using the AI-powered tool Neural Frames, they began creating music videos that blur the line between handmade and surreal. Their visuals carry a dreamlike quality, real but fake, polished but intentionally imperfect, mirroring the band’s sonic identity. While they’re vocal about AI’s flaws, Frozen Inertia has embraced it as a tool, not a substitute, using it to expand narrative possibilities that were once out of reach for a small, independent band.

Looking ahead to 2026, they’re gearing up to release a new EP centered around reimagining and transforming previous material, including a reworked version of “Remember the exit may be located behind you,” a Dan Duszynski remix of “Red Sky at Noon,” and a newly resurrected, harder-edged cover of Kate Bush’s “King of the Mountain.” It’s a project rooted in evolution: revisiting past work not to repeat it, but to discover what else it can become.

Frozen Inertia’s advice to artists mirrors their own ethos: keep creating what makes you happy. Follow the curiosity, embrace the weird edges, and build the worlds only you can see. That’s what Reflectivity represents, and why it stands as one of the year’s most compelling experimental rock releases.

Reflectivity is the release you chose for BUZZMUSIC’s Best of 2025, and you’ve said it’s your strongest album to date. What new creative muscles or risks did you explore on this project that you hadn’t pushed this far before?

The album started because of a new baritone guitar I got, from there we played around with a lot more key changes and weird time signatures  than before.  Also, we had to write sheet music for some of the parts which was a new experience. 

The album blends everything from classical to big band to electronic to prog rock, plus features seventeen collaborators around the world. What did collaboration bring out of Frozen Inertia that wouldn’t have existed in a smaller, more contained process?

At its core, Frozen Inertia is just two people, which creates limits based on what we have access to - so when you open it up to others, it brings in new exciting possibilities.  It doesn’t really change the song itself but it allows for extra layers and fun sonic surprises.  Like, I love the sound of an upright bass, but I never had the physical space to own one and it’s not a sound that can be digitally replicated very well so we got really lucky to be able to collaborate with Tim Lefebvre who laid down a stunning bass track for “It’s just the beginning of something new”.  

Even though the record didn’t move heavily through college radio rotation, every single track has received some type of airplay. Why do you think Reflectivity connects in such different pockets, and what does that say about the album’s eclectic nature?

Yeah, I think there’s a song for everyone on this album but there’s not one or two that everyone can agree on, so there was a bit of a splintering on what college stations chose to play.  To me, the entire album works as a set, but there’s quite a lot of genre shifts, so given that, we’re happy with the diversity of choices they picked and pleasantly surprised that some of the more abstract ones like “You had no new messages today”, which featured an Oboe and spoken word, found a home.

Frozen Inertia has always lived in a weird, beautiful space between indie experimental rock, soundtrack ambience, and intellectual curiosity, down to having your Periodic Table song used in classrooms. How do you define your audience at this point?

Oh, that’s a tough one I haven’t thought about.  Honestly, they’re probably just as diverse as our music.  Maybe they listen for the same reason we create music, to enjoy having music take them on a journey and being open to a sense of humor & abstractions along the way.

You experimented heavily with AI visuals this year, using Neural Frames, moving from cartoon storytelling to dreamlike, partially real, partially unreal sequences. How has this new visual world changed the way you think about the band’s identity?

The music is still the most important priority, so I don’t think it’s changed our identity.   A challenge for us is we’re a recording band that is located in opposite ends of the country, so we unfortunately don’t have the ability to perform live. So, the visuals allow us to create a different kind of performance to go along with the music. 

A lot of artists fear AI, but you’ve been using it as a tool rather than a shortcut. How do you decide when AI enhances the art, and when it crosses into something that doesn’t serve the music?

That’s such a great question and it’s a topic I could spend hours talking about.  I think anytime there’s big shifts in technology or the way things are made, folks get scared. Rightfully so to a certain degree, when MTV was launched there was a balance of embracement and backlash from established musicians, but it also brought in a new generation of artists that thrived creatively balancing great music with innovative visuals.

I think The Eurythmics were amazing at that, the visuals enhanced the already amazing songs (not comparing ourselves to The Eurythmics, they are in their own universe of awesome!).  

With AI, my thought is it needs to be additive to the creative process not a replacement, like I experimented with a couple videos where the AI was entirely creating the visuals, but it was still very easy for it to veer in a completely different direction than I intended and I ended up deleting a couple videos that I didn’t think represented the song in a unique way (i.e. just making generic visuals). 

AI feeds on everything that’s already out there, so it’s not original, so you have to give it new things to make it unique.  Like now, all my videos start with my own images, and I’m using AI to animate them with text of what I’m daydreaming about, which makes it more of the helper and keeps me as the producer.  

Your 2026 EP transforms older material, remixes multiple tracks, and even resurrects a lost Kate Bush cover with new vocals. What does revisiting and reimagining older work reveal about where Frozen Inertia is heading next?

There were a couple songs off Reflectivity that we felt still had something to say, one off the new EP is “Remember the exit might be right behind you” which the original was this abstract instrumental that we rewrote into a pretty heavy, moody rock tune.  This set the stage for the rest of the EP having a sense of urgency to it musically, and allowed us to revisit a few older songs that fit the mood. 

One of which was Kate Bush’s “King of the Mountain” which I recorded the source guitar and vocals (in a small Chicago apartment) shortly after she released the song in 2005!  I thought I’d lost that track, but recently found a way to split out the source recording and add some new stuff to it.  I’m not sure what’s beyond the EP that we’re releasing in January, but we’re excited to get these new/old songs out there.