Review ·  The music Seth Haley creates under the moniker Com
Truise can best be understood as a series of variations on the
same theme. Not to undersell the producer's talent, but hearing
just one track—any track—is all you need to get a handle on what
he's trying to accomplish. In Decay-- the new collection of
unreleased and demo tracks out on Ghostly International-- shows
that Haley arrived at his cohesive synth-heavy sound early in
his career and perfected it though endlessly reworking the same
basic components over and over.  Pick any of the album's 13
tracks at random and you're guaranteed to hear some combination
of the same sonic elements: plodding drum beats dominated by
kicks and snares; hazy square-wave synth melodies that loop and
repeat with small flourishes; and thick, funk-informed bass
lines that lurch along at a glacial pace. For the most part,
these elements come together in the same way for each song. The
musical gestalt that gives “Open” it's hypnotic retro-futuristic
feel also appears in “