Krystof Berg from Poland decyphers his personal definition of music by his moniker Krypton and a “Silent Drama” is the subject of his release on the TestTube netlabel. I do not know whether the cover art was deliberately chosen by himself, but I think it matches the title pretty well: A black and white photography with an indetermined background and three persons oblivious to a strange world taking in irritating poses. Neither the person in the foreground nor the two in the background have anything common save their self centred absence. So is “Silent Drama” begging the question whether it refers to isolated individuals, autism, schizophrenia?

The first three tunes are characterised by sinister tension: Piercing tones hover over the misty ground of a vault and form sharp glassy counterpoints to indecisive harmonics. There appears to be no escape from the silence as motives are circling around themselves, hindering any development that could lead to a change of mood. Instead, more accents are added or subtracted: Whenever there are glimpses of sunlight, they turn out to be delusions soon to be swallowed by gloomy chords. In “Labour” even those sparse orientation points are retracted and all that is left is a state of helpless gliding. These first three tracks are great intense moments that do reflect the “silent drama”.

Unfortunately, three rather mediocre fillers that try to fish in more conventional waters spoil the initial impression. Sometimes they appear to use Autechre’s “Chiastic Slide” period as role model, albeit not reaching their highly skilled level of orchestration. These rather aimlessly fading episodes clearly point out the limitations of the vault sound strategy occuring in each track, as contrasting details are smeared away and boomy low frequency rumbles sometimes make the sound a rather unpleasant experience on high quality equipment. There’s a remarkable contradiction between letting things slide and tearing apart conventional harmonics on the one side and shrinking back from daring soundscapes and replacing them with traditional elements, such as a steady 4/4 time rhythm section on the other side. Fortunately the last track bridges the contradiction and turns out to be a deserving final, as it resolves the tension of the first three tracks without trading it for concessions to mainstream music trivialities.

This could have become a very good 4 track EP, but as a full length release it cannot keep up the high quality level introduced in the beginning and turns out to be sightly disappointing, considering the potential Krystof Berg’s music is able to unveil. Finding one’s musical identity is not an easy task, and it seems he’s still at the beginning. But, at least there is a beginning: Way too many musicians even fail to see the shore line, stick to safe mode and hide behind conventional structures.