CryptoChroma released their first record in 2020, but behind the project is actually someone who has been making music for decades: Jån Vinoelst. Vinoelst excels in electronic music ranging from electro to minimal wave, and also guarantees solid substance. On March 28, we are inviting CryptoChroma to a Dark Entries Night at the Kinky Star in Ghent, and that was a good opportunity to ask Vinoelst a few questions.
Hi Jan. We have the honor of welcoming you and CryptoChroma to the next Dark Entries Night. I’m taking a guess at the origins of the project, as I saw that your first release came out in June 2020. Did you also throw yourself back into music during the corona lockdown? If not, can you give us an idea of how CryptoChroma came into being?
Hi Xavier, first of all, thanks for the invitation — it feels great to be on the bill.
CryptoChroma didn’t actually originate during the lockdown, but that period did accelerate the project and sharpen it. Music has never really gone away for me. I have always continued working with sound, just not always under the same name or with the same focus.
What happened around 2020 was that everything suddenly came to a standstill. And in that silence, there was room to listen again — to what I wanted to create, but also to what lay beneath the surface. CryptoChroma grew out of that: as a kind of reorientation. Less compromise, more inwardness. It didn’t feel like a new beginning, but rather a continuation to finally find the right form.
Your first album ‘Numb’ seems heavily influenced by the pandemic to me. I suspect that songs like ‘Sleepparalysis’, ‘Anonimous Contagious’, and certainly ‘The Bat Of Wuhan’ refer directly to the pandemic. Is that correct?
That link is often made, and that is understandable, but it is not that straightforward.
The pandemic was in the air, literally and figuratively, and that tension inevitably crept into the music. But the songs on ‘Numb’ stem rather from a broader state of alienation and loss of control that had been present for some time.
Titles such as ‘Sleepparalysis’ or ‘Anonymous Contagious’ can be read in a pandemic context, but to me they are just as much about mental states — about invisible threat, about something that spreads without you being able to truly grasp it.
‘The Bat Of Wuhan’ is perhaps the most direct nod and was picked up worldwide. But even there, there is a certain distance. I tried to capture an atmosphere rather than document an event.
You also had a larger concept behind CryptoChroma right from the start. You said back then that you wanted to address themes such as fear, post-apocalypse, rejection, despair, and greed. Could you elaborate a bit on the concept you had in mind for CryptoChroma?
The concept of CryptoChroma was never intended as a fixed narrative, but rather as a kind of framework within which I can work.
What interests me are fields of tension: between control and surrender, between the individual and the system, between reality and perception. Themes such as fear, rejection, or profit-seeking are offshoots of this.
For me, the post-apocalypse is not an endpoint either, but rather a mental state. The idea that something is already over, while you are still in the middle of it.
CryptoChroma is therefore not a storyline in the classical sense, but a landscape, a place where those themes converge and where the listener can project their own interpretation.
Part of the concept is also behind the name CryptoChroma, named after a protein found in all of us. Can you explain that?
The name CryptoChroma indeed comes from cryptochromes, proteins that are involved in, among other things, our biological rhythm and our perception of light and time.
What intrigued me about this is that processes take place in our bodies that influence our behavior and feelings, without us being truly aware of them.
That link to time, rhythm, and a kind of internal clock aligns very strongly with how I experience music. Electronic music also has something cyclical, something repetitive, but at the same time shifting.
For me, CryptoChroma refers to those invisible layers — to what happens beneath the surface, both biologically and mentally.
For the second album ‘Ominous Clouds’, you were asked by Red Maze Records for a vinyl release. How did that come about? What do you think is the future of such physical releases?
It actually happened quite organically. Fernando Wax from Red Maze Records had picked up my work on Soundcloud and there was an immediate mutual feeling that it was a good fit, both musically and aesthetically.
To me, vinyl still feels like a very suitable medium for this kind of music. It has always been a dream to be able to release a real ‘record’ someday. It forces you to listen differently — slower, more consciously. It has that physical dimension that you don’t have with digital releases.
I don’t think vinyl will ever become the norm again, but it doesn’t have to. It has found its own place as something more conscious, something more tangible. And for projects like CryptoChroma, that just makes sense.
Was there also a deeper concept behind ‘Ominous Clouds’?
‘Ominous Clouds’ starts more from a sense of threat that is less concrete, but perhaps stronger precisely because of it.
Where ‘Numb’ felt more internal, ‘Ominous Clouds’ is slightly more externally focused. As if there is something hanging above you that you cannot name, but that is definitely present.
Those ‘clouds’ are not specific events, but rather an accumulation of signals — political, technological, social — that together create a certain tension.
It is less a story than an atmosphere that slowly builds.
You collaborated with various people on your two albums: Violet Candide from Mitra Mitra, Raya Schaduwjaagster from Dark Poem, and Leila Venus. You also say you are open to more collaborations. What is the value of such collaborations to you?
Collaborations are particularly interesting to me because they break things open. When you work alone, you inevitably build a certain framework. Someone else brings a different sensitivity into it, a different perspective.
With people like Violet Candide or Leila Venus, that also felt very natural. These aren’t forced collaborations, but rather encounters from which something grows. The track with Raya Schaduwjaagster is a remix of a track by For Greater Good for which she lent her voice. I view that more as a hybrid collaboration, although I would certainly like to make a new song with her someday.
These collaborations ensure that the project does not become too closed-off and that there is breathing room.
You’ve only just released a new single: ‘Rising Towers’. I get the feeling it’s about world politics, but these days I see more towers collapsing than rising. Can you tell us a bit more about the song?
‘Rising Towers’ can certainly be read in a geopolitical context, but again, I am trying to keep it a bit broader.
For me, it is about the growing egos and structures — systems that are being built, that represent power, but that are at the same time tragic and fragile.
The image of rising towers has something ambitious, almost utopian about it, but there is always a dark side to it as well. Growth and collapse are often closer together than we think.
Maybe the song is precisely about that tension — between construction and decay.
About ten years ago, we also had the pleasure of welcoming you to a Dark Entries Night. That was with Messier 39, a duo with Ludwika Jakubowska with whom you made a very beautiful EP. I see that you recorded another record under that name without Ludwika afterwards, but that the project stopped after that. May we know what happened?
Messier 39 was a very important chapter for me. There was strong musical chemistry with Ludwika, and that led to something that really had to exist at that moment. But as is sometimes the case, people evolve, and priorities shift.
The record I made after that under that name already felt different. More like a conclusion than a continuation. It was perhaps already the transition to CryptoChroma that was taking place.
It never really ‘stopped’ for a clear reason, it rather slowly faded out or worked itself out. And we were both okay with the silence that followed.
Is there anything to report about your other project Cape Sidereal? It was originally active in 2014-2015, and resurfaced with two releases in 2024.
Cape Sidereal is another facet of the same search. I regard this moniker as a space where experiments primarily took place in a quest for identity, sound, and theme.
It is perhaps slightly less explicitly dark, but still strongly focused on atmosphere. The releases in 2024 were new experiments that, in my opinion, were not suitable for CryptoChroma.
Incidentally, I don’t see it as a comeback, but rather as something that is always present, a weed that occasionally pops back up.
Some ideas fit better within CryptoChroma, others within Cape Sidereal. They are different angles of the same need to explore sound.
Listen on Bandcamp: Numb / Ominous Clouds