Fifty minutes into Com Truise (Seth Haley)'s fifth "Komputer Cast"-- an infrequent but rewarding podcast series offered through his website-- he takes a wild left turn into Other Side's "Central". The track, an obscure, surly post-punk offering, collides harshly with the proggy computer compositions that surround it. It's like being punched in a library: You peel yourself off the floor smelling must and blood. It's an interesting moment because this impulse-- to fuck things up, to jar and puncture-- is absent from Haley's recorded work. It's still missing on In Decay, a 13-track, digital-only, rarities compilation that finds a younger Haley asking little of his listeners or himself.
Most of the material on In Decay was recorded prior to Haley's 2011 debut LP Galactic Melt. We can debate the utility of this type of release for a prolific, still-green producer, but that timeline is important because In Decay is deceptively underdeveloped. (The digital distribution, normally a great idea, chafes: Like many on the Ghostly roster, Haley has such a well-developed sense of design that his physical products are treats.) Haley so ably winds his synths into pleasing shapes that his compositions can sound complex when they're not. On In Decay, it's the drums that give him away: Respectful, grid-worshipping snares dominate almost every track, slapping against the more formed melodic ideas.
About those ideas: In Decay still leans heavily on dry-ice, low-cal funk. The tracks are baubles, pure sonic fetishes that that fail to provoke discernible imagery or mood beyond a noirish appreciation for the oscillators of Christmas past. Where Galactic Melt dipped its toes into dance music, In Decay hovers sluggishly in midtempo grooves (the engine rev of "Klymaxx" is a welcome diversion). In this mode, bass-heavy anthems like "Data Kiss" and "Smily Cyclops" offer the most to grasp.
The re-emergence of Chromatics (including Johnny Jewel side concern Symmetry) and Todd Terje's hot streak-- among others-- mean that an already crowded field of 1980s analog revivalists has, shockingly, gotten more crowded. Cut Haley whatever slack you see fit for In Decay's odds-and-sods status, but nothing here dispels the notion that his vision is more limited than that of many of his peers. He is a pure stylist, something his affinity for beautiful graphic design helps make clear, but if you're sitting behind a synthesizer in 2012 in the name of nostalgia, you'd better be able to use it to sharpen that style to a point. In Decay is too dull and passive to threaten.
