Dry-ice hangs like smog emanating from a bombed-out, forgotten neighborhood of dilapidated and hollowed buildings. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of a once inhabited park square, you can hear the occasional screeching of a broken sign in the wind, the creaking of unlocked doors on rusty hinges, the occasional pitter-patter of bird feet scouring for a meal, the scrapings of metals, and dead voices drifting on the breeze? This is the sound of an urban wasteland seemingly romanticized like the ruins of Rome; only this is a picture of present and existing conditions in a third-world America, not illustrations from a dystopian novel set in some distant future or found relics of ancient history. These are the conditions of the industrial sectors of so many cities found throughout the Manufacturing Belt. These are the wasted conditions of forgotten neighborhoods; decayed and rotten as prophesied by the Luddites. Trockeneis create a literal interpretation of industrial music for post-industrial times. A music that sounds as though it were created by and for itself within these conditions. These are the desperate sounds of ghostly inhabitants scurrying around abandoned machines across a thick carpet of dirt and iron filings in rooms and halls of empty factories. A sound hidden somewhere between shadows and rust, between silence and horror.

5025 AD is a brilliant LP. Trockeneis is German for ?Dry Ice? and is the literal center-piece from which their improvisations are worked from. They make free music made without the aid of electronics or effects; in fact the only instruments used were dry ice, bowed metal, musical saws, bowed cymbals, voice, and percussion. The result is something beautiful, dreary, and mesmerizing; nothing less than amazing. This is not a new release, in fact I believe it came out quite a while back, but that shouldn?t stop anyone from ordering a copy immediately. The packaging is beautifully done with artwork by Dan Breen and covers that were hand silk screened by Twig Harper and Carly Ptak. Essential and highly recommended. 9/10 -- Todd Brooks (21 April, 2008)