Com Truise – Iteration

It's been a long six years since electronica musician Seth Haley (aka Com Truise) has released anything new and, suffice to say, we're glad he's back. Nostalgic, dramatic and not exactly short on synth, Iteration is the kind of album necessary to help us battle through the rest of 2017. 

The shimmering sounds and blasting beats make you feel like you've fallen into the soundtrack to an eighties sci-fi movie which you kind of have, given that there's an intricate narrative behind the album, one crammed with space adventure, looming danger and far-flung planets. It seems like Haley has set himself the personal challenge of seeing how much emotion can possibly be convey through electronic music and without the aid of lyrics.

While each song fits neatly within Haley's overarching conceptual aims, there's a lot of variety here with anthemic tracks like ...Of Your Fake Dimension giving way to the pathos of songs like Propagation. He displays a complete mastery of his craft, builing up electronic sounds in an alternate language ample enough to express shifting moods and paint a series of tableaux.

Those who weren't fans of Com Truise six years ago will certainly not change their tune now given that Iteration isn't a major departure from earlier album Galactic Melt, instead offering a new manifestation of Haley's signature style as he tests his skills on a different narrative. Indeed, the album's title seems to refer to this consistency in Haley's work, and also to the importance of repetition in electronic music more generally, where repeated sounds act like the letters of the alphabet, building meaning through the way they combine and repeat. 

Listen to: Dryswch, Vacuume