Trockeneis
…A musical collective devoted to New Frictionalism - the boundary between extreme tempi and sonic continuity ("tone".)

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We play non-conventional acoustic instruments: dry ice, bowed metal, musical saws, bowed cymbals, voice, and percussion.

Our music has been described as evocative, disturbing, dreamlike, and most of all - highly unique - even to audiences with a huge amount of exposure to noise, electronic, & experimental music.
(photo courtesy of Mike Muniak)

Our friend Scott Smallwood http://www.music.princeton.edu/~skot/main.html came down to Baltimore and recorded us in a large empty warehouse space and stair-well in 2004. The resulting recordings were put out as our first record - 5025 AD on Ehse Records with beautiful covers and labels designed by Dan Breen.





Reviews
Noiseweek
Excerpt
" The soldiers at 804Noise have been keeping Richmond and other parts of
non-D.C.-touching Virginia sonically healthy for a while now, and I
finally got to check out an edition of their massive annual fest last
Sunday. Advanced age has limited my band-viewing tolerance to about six or
so before I exhibit temporary narcolespsy and/or arthritis, so I didn't
get to the shiny Art Works until about the halfway point of the day's
daunting 12-hour slate. Initially distracted by records and handshakes,
I'm not really sure who I half-saw at first, though I know I got a
satisfying taste of Stephen Vitiello's slices of distortion and weighty
tones. The rest of what happened before dinner break is a small, happy
blur.

The stretch run that followed, though, was blindingly vivid -- six
straight sets of great, eye-focusing noise. Baltimore's acoustic-noise
quartet Trockeneis (whose stellar album is free to download at Ehse's
site, btw) was total hypnosis - two guys bowing at cymbals and other
percussion pieces, Audrey Chen doing mind-bending vocal/facial
calisthenics that completely avoided cliche, and Catherine Pancake making
piercing, powerful drones with cymbals, bowls, a hot plate, and a chunk of
dry ice. The way the four scientists in this group meshed and melted was
brain-teasing - a few times I thought Audrey was getting drowned out until
I realized that the scraping drone was coming from her lungs, and the same
who's-doing-what feeling was true for each sound-maker at some point along
the way." 10-22-06
Full review|
http://noiseweek.blogspot.com/2006/10/804-noise-birds-in-meadow.html



Paris Transatlantic Magazine
"Trockeneis" is German for "dry ice", and that's exactly what Baltimore-based Catherine Pancake plays. How you play dry ice isn't all that clear to me, but if you're interested there's a photo by Michael Anton Parker of her doing it at http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/frontpage/001118.html. In Trockeneis, she's joined by fellow "New Frictionalists" – nice term, that.. think I'll start using it myself from now on – Paul Neidhardt (percussion), Dan Breen and Andy Hayleck (bowed metal), and Audrey Chen (voice). If you've been following developments on John Berndt's Recorded label, you'll know by now that there's a whole helluva lot more happening in Baltimore than John Waters might have you believe. It's one of those tightly organised, dynamic local improv scenes that have sprung up in major cities worldwide over the past decade. Trockeneis is to Baltimore what BSC is to Boston or Phosphor is to Berlin, if you like, and this album deserves to be filed away next to Phosphor on Potlatch and BSC's Good on Grob as one of contemporary improv's more exciting debut albums. It's uncompromising stuff, especially at high volume (the only way to play it – no point trying to listen to this as background music), even if the LP pressing leaves a lot to be desired (but hell what's a little bit of surface noise, for Chrissakes?). The strange metallic squeaks and squeals complement Chen's ghostly / ghastly vocalisms to perfection, painting a dark, forbidding landscape in thrilling chiaroscuro. Maybe this is what Baltimore will look like in 5025 AD. I won't be sticking round to find out, but if these cats ever play a gig here in Paris, I'll be there with my scarf and gloves on. October, 2006 - Dan Warburton

Dusted Magazine
Trockeneis
5025 AD 12" LP
(Ehse)
Here's five pieces by a violent-sounding, extremely aware improv
ensemble from Baltimore. Trockeneis is a five-piece using bowed metal,
voice, percussion, musical saws, and that ever-popular instrument,
"dry ice with heated metal." Skitterish, Jaap Blonk-esque vocal
improvisations sit next to unsteady drones, sirens, and scrapes
punctuated by rhythmic howling. I can't say as I can pick out The Most
Popular Instrument Sound of the 21st Century (DRY ICE! HEATED METAL!)
but I can say that I was duly impressed with the structure of these
pieces and how well this completely non-traditional ensemble has
learned to play off of itself. Out of all of these pieces, the fifth
movement shines brightest, a massive, dampening piece owing a debt in
construction to Xenakis, and maybe even Charles Ives. Fantastic stuff.
Edition of 500 in beautiful silkscreened sleeves. This is the
challenge sounded to all latter-day noise fanatics. Go forth and fall.
(www.ehserecords.com)

Baltimore City Paper
6/7/06

Bret McCabe

Baltimore experimental music has always condoned drone. But unlike rock and jazz, which seek levitation somewhere along an asymptotic two-dimensional curve approaching axes of repetition and reverberation, homegrown “Om” tones find it in the off-kilter, offhand, and just plain off. Until now. The all-acoustic Trockeneis—bowed metal men Dan Breen and Andy Hayleck, vocalist Audrey Chen, percussionist Paul Niedhardt, and dry-ice sorceress Catherine Pancake—plumbs cavernous spaces, creating something ominous in its sparse, thoughtful take on extended drone.

Its 5025 AD debut LP out on Stewart Mostofsky’s democratically esoteric Ehse imprint features five pieces, each feeling almost like an afterthought if you put it on at a normal volume level—you know, what the stereo/iPod/headphones are usually set to, enough to enjoy but not too much to annoy the neighboring co-worker/apartment dweller/public transportation rider. At such volume Trockeneis sounds like insects having a rather boring discussion. Only when you turn 5025 AD up does it reveal its ominous secrets.

The three cuts on the B-side capture the quintet in miniature. The first piece slowly oozes its tense timbres, with Breen and Hayleck’s bowed metal growling like a troll’s angry stomach. Chen’s indubitably nimble voice is set to creepshow here, her angelic tones bubbling out of a hovering murk on the second track and then quickly transmogrifying into choked, piercing notes and sotto voce screams. Pancake’s dry-ice gymnastics—at times she wiggles out muffled peals like an asthmatic aspirating from a trumpet, at others shooting high-pitched pains—tumble around Chen’s haunting voice with Niedhardt’s percussion walking with a beautifully awkward, John Cage-ian gait.

The quintet hits its spooky peak with the extended second track on the A-side, a 14-minute and change descent into organic skin-crawling. The bowed metal sustains a horror-movie anxiety with steady vibrato. Pancake and Niedhardt cast off viscous globs of sound. And Chen exhales a constant moan that sounds like a steady wind whistling through the baseboards of a farmhouse. The whole thing imperceptibly amplifies until that constant breeze intensifies into a destructive force. And then Pancake melts long-winded squeals that cause everybody to fade out slowly, ending with elusive sounds chopping out anxious rumbling like thunder from a faraway storm. You know, when you see lightning’s capillary white streaks varicose the bruised sky and you hear it a few breaths later, the time in between getting shorter and shorter, and you realize the worst is still to come.

Links to Trockeneis Songs

http://www.ehserecords.com/ mp3s/ehse004/01%20Trockeneis_5025AD_Side1.1.mp3 http://www.ehserecords.com mp3s/ehse004/02%20Trockeneis_5025AD_Side1.2.mp3 http://www.ehserecords.com mp3s/ehse004/03%20Trockeneis_5025AD_Side2.1.mp3 http://www.ehserecords.com mp3s/ehse004/04%20Trockeneis_5025AD_Side2.2.mp3 http://www.ehserecords.com mp3s/ehse004/05%20Trockeneis_5025AD_Side2.3.mp3

Trockeneis has also been honored to play in collaboration with Sébastien Cirotteau http://s.cirotteau.info , & Nate Wooley http://www.natewooley.com/.

Born quite impromptu during a live improv set performed for the Peadbody Conservatory student body in spring 2004, the Baltimore quintet, Trockeneis, has since been generating excitement in the East Coast improv/experimental music scene. The group is comprised of a core group of Baltimore improvisers each who brings great passion and musical subtlety to create a truly unique sound/improv experience. A combination of highly idiosyncratic instrumentation, focused, mature musicianship and ego-free, risk-taking group dynamics promise to make this group known on a national level. The group has definite roots in lowercase improv, but grows rapidly beyond that creating complex, rich soundscapes rooted in a true spirit of experimentation.

 Paul Neidhardt , percussion

Paul Neidhardt is a very accomplished rock, jazz, free jazz and experimental percussionist from the Baltimore MD area. He performs in a variety of musical projects. His ability to trade extremely tight traditional chops with very focused sound-oriented techniques such a doweling, bowing, suction etc has made him a favorite in improv circles.

Dan Breen , bowed metal

Dan Breen is an well-known multi-instrumentalist in Baltimore and other East Coast cities. His wandering, eccentric style of playing and living brings joy to the many who know and love him. He performs with a range of musical projects from the funk band, The Financial Group, to the un-categorizable and tasty electronics/drums group - Snacks. He also plays bass in the Baltimore Afro-Beat Society devoted to performing and preserving the music of Fela Kuti.

Andrew Hayleck , bowed metal

Andy Hayleck is quickly becoming a nationally known sound artist and musician. His extensive touring and field-recordings (ice, crabs etc) are well-known in experimental music scenes across the US. He has performed in local and national festivals and participated in radio broadcasts in the US and GB. Andy is also a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Andy’s field recording of natural ice formations was selected in Art Forums Top 10 art music records in 2004.

Catherine Pancake , dry ice

Catherine Pancake is a film-maker, musician, and cultural organizer based in Baltimore MD.  Her films have been shown nationally at the Philadelphia International Film Festival, Millenium Theater - NYC, Contemporary Museum - Baltimore, Ohio State University, VA Tech, and more.  As a musician she has traveled internationally in Asia (Shanghai Conservatory ROC, Taipei National School for the Arts, International House Tokyo) and Canada collaborating with Audrey Chen, Susan Alcorn, Le Quan Ninh, Oluyemi Thomas, and the group Trockeneis.  She is a founding member of the RedRoom Collective, High Zero Foundation, Charm City Kitty Club (GLBT arts venue,) and the Transmodern Festival http://www.transmodernage.com.

Audrey Chen ,  voice

Using her trusty cello, self-styled vocal techniques and ever surprising content/concepts, Audrey Chen has emerged as one of the most vital experimental free-improvisers in the United States and beyond.  She has toured extensively around the world bringing her sounds and intuition to Poland, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, China, Japan, and the United States. Among musicians, she has worked with many great improvisers, including Phil Minton, Alessandro Bosetti, Mike Cooper, Mats Gustafsson, Sten Sandell, Mazen Kerbaj, Jaap Blonk, Michael Zerang, Tony Buck, Tatsuya Nakatani, Assif Tsahar, Scott Rosenberg, Le Quan Ninh, Joe Mcphee, Susan Alcorn, Michele Doneda, Paolo Angeli, and Gianni Gebbia. Some current projects include: duo projects with Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) and Gianni Gebbia (saxophone) from Palermo, Sicily, Trockeneis (Baltimore’s power quintet), and a new trio (SILO) with Nate Wooley and Leonel Kaplan (trumpets). Recent performances have included a duo tour with Nakatani through China and Japan celebrating the release of their new duo CD, LIMN. www.hhproduction.org. Also, Chen has just returned from touring solo and with Gebbia and SILO through Europe in February/March. Some upcoming engagements include, a USA tour with SILO and a tour through China, Japan and Taiwan with Bosetti later in 2006.

….Other writings about Trockeneis

EHSE RECORDS: From the den of pre-scientific iniquity in which Baltimore sound
actors thrive on non-planning, the stately emergence of professional
harsh acousticians in five-part harmony, a brash romp through the New
Frictionalism, The New Spectralism, and The New Ritualism. Bowing.
Rubbing. Scraping. Squealing. Squeaking. Screeching. Moaning. Silence.
Anything else. Nothing else. Sound fixations waiting to unfix in the
act of observation/measurement. Go ahead, measure them. Then flip to
side B and watch your numbers float away in a muddy stream of ink. All
sounds were made without electricity. It's portable music. You can
easily move from now to the time when there was no emotion, just its
precursors of permanently lingering urgency. Paul Neidhardt, Catherine
Pancake, Dan Breen, and Andy Hayleck caress their idiophones until
they're lost in backporch lullabies of terror. Audrey Chen's voice
also gets lost, swallowed by its mechanical half-kin and trapped into
the shadow world of forbidden overtones. In the center we find a
steaming hunk of dry ice, hosting the sounds of molecular frenzy at
the interface of hot and cold. Metal. Wood. H2O. Larynx. Danger.
Safety. They say it's built into the limbic system.

Michael Anton Parker:Bagatellen web site: I don't intend to say anything profound here, but earlier tonight I experienced a performance that compelled me to make a brief observation, a platitude worth savoring if you will.

Sometimes we experience something that seems to follow from nothing, some segment of transcendence that couldn't've been predicted, feels unrepeatable, and is perhaps even unidentifiable once the moments are over. Flukes. We walk away with a peak of elation gradually receding into our daily life. We feel lucky to have been privy to that point in space-time. We may think the particular musicians are really quite talented in some way or another, that we can almost expect them to make these experiences happen. We may feel they are the ones we ought to gamble on listening to again sometime. But ultimately a sobering voice in our head acknowledges that it will never happen again. Doubts about attribution may ensue: maybe we were just in the right mood to hear it in such a rapturous way; maybe it was the composing-listener and not the composing-soundmaker who made it happen?

Often enough, free improvisors play in a configuration more than once. If a person or group makes this sort of thing happen and we attend another performance by them sometime, we want it to happen again, but we have to be content expecting something sort of in the ballpark to happen, because plainly the incalculably large odds are that it will never happen again. It's intrinsic to free improvisation. This knowledge may even feel like a faint blemish on that repeat encounter.

So here's what actually happens on rare and memorable occasions. It happens again. The same people and sound tools making different sound events, but once again, it. We fumble in the self-played game of expectations. We know it's theoretically possible for it to happen again. We wonder if this musician or group has achieved some kind of abstract repeatability, despite all absurd odds against it. We think of them as an entity independent of individual performances. Of course this is a standard conceptualization for non-free-improvised music, but repeatability is some negative essence of free improvisation. Each performance is created anew.

In other words, tonight I noticed that free improvisation is a wondrous thing because it potentially allows us to re-experience the most exciting thing possible: something experienced as unrepeatable. Probably this thought seems trite for any habitual listener of free improvisation, but this way of making music seems miraculous to me when this truth is verified by a lived experience. In my present state of awe I cannot take this phenomenon for granted, though perhaps I usually do.

My intention is to just make this brief observation, not issue a concert report, but let me attach a name to the event that triggered it, for the sake of tangibility and documentation. It's a group called Trockeneis from Baltimore. The members are Audrey Chen, Catherine Pancake, Andy Hayleck, Dan Breen, and Paul Neidhardt. They mainly use voice, dry ice, bowed metal, rubbed dowels, some other frictionally activated surfaces, and occasional struck small objects. I've long harbored an urge to write at least twenty pages accounting for their revolutionary aesthetic and unfailingly repeated transcendence-making, not to mention the vast virtues of each of these five individuals, but that will have to wait till another day because I insist on making a non-delayed entry to this space. I will turn towards sleep in a few minutes with no ambition to speak further on tonight's re-Trockeneis-ing, instead just thankful that free improvisation is part of my life for a reason I hope others are interested in.

My photographs from a few hours ago are too lousy to publish, so here is a photograph of Catherine Pancake playing dry ice during the previous Trockeneis concert I attended on November 11th, 2005 at The Red Room in Baltimore. In the background is Sebastian Cirotteau. He was visiting from France and performed with Trockeneis; his contribution was impeccable, yet fairly inconsequential; Audrey Chen wasn't in this performance because she was on tour somewhere on the other side of the planet. Different sound events for sure, but it happened again that time. It's only fitting to depict my previous Trockeneis experience in this context, because the big news is it happened again tonight. If my offhand count is correct, this was the tenth time it happened again for me because of Trockeneis. The first time was sometime in the Fall of 2004. Needless to say, a second time is the stuff spasms of fanhood are made of, so a tenth time is worth mentioning, at the very least.

The wonders of this thing we call free improvisation owe as much to repeatable group chemistry as Sir Bailey's famed situational renewal.