If you’re looking for music that recreates the synthesizer ambience that was so emblematic of the 1980s, there’s no shortage of current artists to turn to. But electronic producer Seth Haley’s work under his most well-known pseudonym, Com Truise, is arguably the closest you can come to a TRON-like experience of total immersion. Like his previous two full-lengths and four EPs, Haley’s latest Com Truise album Iteration immediately brings to mind the feel of low-budget exercise-video soundtracks and VHS tapes whose pitch would warp when your VCR’s tracking control would kick in and it sounded like the tape was getting chewed up in the player.
Of course, these are sounds that immediately evoke their accompanying visuals. If Com Truise’s source of inspiration wasn’t obvious enough, though, his first two albums, 2011’s Galactic Melt and 2012’s In Decay spelled it out for you with album covers featuring the vintage fonts, crude computer design, and murky color saturation that once proliferated across film, TV, music, and advertising. Where artists like Boards of Canada, Tobacco, and Julian Casablancas have used ’80s aesthetics as one of several tools in their creative arsenal, Haley’s palette has been especially constrained.
Whether this is intentional rather than unimaginative, you can’t get around Com Truise’s limited range. Haley does stretch out somewhat on Iteration, though, in contrast to previous releases, and he’s learning to emphasize composition over sounds alone. Opener “...Of Your Fake Dimension” begins with a stately keyboard figure that could have worked as a hook on acoustic piano or guitar. Likewise, the electronic drum pattern, bass-register synth line, and the extra keyboard fills that pepper the song all point to an increased awareness of band dynamics, as if Truise had live players in mind.
There are numerous other examples like this, and Iteration certainly gives the impression that Haley has started to care about arrangements as much as he does about mood and tone. “Dryswch” starts out, as so much of Com Truise’s music does, with a keyboard haze that feels like looking out onto a thick blanket of fog, where you can’t clearly discern the boundary between the fog and anything else. A coiling sound effect that recalls the early days of Atari pogos across the stereo field—nothing new so far. But then the track quickly flowers as an actual song.
Had “Dryswch” contained vocals, you could easily imagine it as a pop single; in fact, you almost can’t listen without hearing a vocal hook atop it. Still, Haley manages to invest the tune with a tension. At several points, the music pauses to hover, creating still pockets to reflect. “Dryswch” shows what Haley is capable of when he doesn’t lay things on quite so thick. It wouldn’t quite be fair to say that “Dryswch” rivals ’80s music as complex and cerebral as Seeds of Love-era Tears for Fears, but it’s certainly encouraging to see Haley pushing himself towards a higher level of sophistication with its sliding, interlocking parts. The album also features key moments—“Isostasy,” “Vacuume,” “Ternary”—where Haley goes for the gold with hooks so big and melodic they cause a kind of auditory sugar rush. The fact that he’s able to do so without a single vocal in sight shows what a skilled craftsperson he’s become.
Of course, there are times throughout Iteration when Haley sounds trapped in the same old rut. Overall, though, the album balances between bombast and gestures that are a little harder to read. That contrast gives Iteration a texture that’s missing from previous Com Truise releases. In the past, Haley has steered the experience in one direction with such a singularity of focus that it felt like being engulfed in synthetic kitsch. Even if you weren’t averse to its overwhelming ’80s flavor, it didn’t take long for the music to get flat or even queasy. This time, Haley works around his limitations just enough to stave off one-trick irrelevance. Good on him, as it’s only a matter of time before ’80s retrofuturism becomes a thing of the distant past.
