Com Truise
Seth Haley's synthwave project, named by spoonerism from Tom Cruise, whose Ghostly debut Galactic Melt (2011) tells the story of a synthetic astronaut and holds "Flightwave".
From drum and bass to synthwave
Com Truise is Seth Haley, born in 1985 in Oneida, New York by MusicBrainz and Wikipedia's text, though its infobox says Madison County. The name is a spoonerism of the actor Tom Cruise's, and he has said Top Gun was a big inspiration when he started the project. He began as a drum and bass DJ under another alias and has said the evolution came from feeling very boxed in by the production of drum and bass; a chance encounter with Boards of Canada pointed him toward a 1980s-inspired style. Earlier names were Sarin Sunday, SYSTM (the Invader EP, 2009, self-released) and Airliner. Before music he worked in advertising as an art director, and he resigned that job before Cyanide Sisters.
Cyanide Sisters (2010) was his first release as Com Truise, a free download on AMDISCS that Ghostly International reissued digitally in January 2011. Soon after he remixed Daft Punk's "ENCOM, Part II" for Tron: Legacy Reconfigured. He describes his style as mid-fi synth-wave, slow-motion funk, and names 1980s synthpop, Giorgio Moroder and Vangelis, with Blade Runner, Neuromancer and Aliens, as influences.
Galactic Melt and the saga
Galactic Melt came out on Ghostly on June 5, 2011, produced by Haley, with the singles "Futureworld" (July 19, 2010) and "Cathode Girls" (March 18, 2011). It was followed by Fairlight (2011) and the compilation In Decay (July 16, 2012, 56:22, collecting tracks from mixtapes, some predating Cyanide Sisters), then Wave 1 (February 18, 2014), Silicon Tare (2016), Iteration (June 2017), Persuasion System (May 17, 2019), In Decay, Too (2020) and Brokendate (March 31, 2023). The albums from Cyanide Sisters through Iteration tell the story of a space traveler named Com Truise, a synthetic astronaut; Persuasion System leaves that narrative behind.
In February 2022 he made the music for Coinbase's Super Bowl LVI advertisement, sampling the Beatles' cover of "Money (That's What I Want)". Live he has used drums by Rory O'Connor of Tycho in 2012 and later a rig of Ableton Live, a DSI OB-6, Akai controllers, an Elektron Digitakt and Resolume driving LED panels. Setlist.fm lists 288 setlists, and its tour filters show 42 for the fall 2019 US tour. In a 2019 Splice piece he said, of the Oberheim Xpander, that it is just a beautiful synth, so bright, yet still pretty warm.
Albums
- Galactic Melt 2011 · Ghostly International
His debut album: ten tracks, produced by Com Truise, the first chapter of the synthetic-astronaut story.
Songs
- Flightwave Galactic Melt · 2011
Track five of Galactic Melt, with some of the album's most aggressive beats.
Sources
- Com Truise, Wikipedia
- Galactic Melt, Wikipedia
- Com Truise interview, The Skinny (2012-08-03)
- The 5 best Tom Cruise movies according to Com Truise, Bandwagon (2016-01-03)