T O P GEAR A long way from his humble beginnings of department-store keyboards, Com Truise now packs an arsenal of vintage synths.
by Eddie Fleisher photography by Danny Scales
Seth Haley is known for crafting rich, multi-textured soundscapes as Com Truise. His ’80s-inspired songs ooze with the warm sounds of vintage synths. But, it didn’t start with an expensive piece of analog gear.“Oh, man, I don’t know, a department-store keyboard,” Haley says when asked what he used to make his first tunes. He laughs, adding:“ I can’t remember the name of it. Some crappy Casio keyboard and a computer.” Before Haley started making his own tracks, he spun drum and bass. He got hooked on the genre when he first heard AK1200 on a digital music channel on his cousin’s TV.“I was just baffled. I’d never heard anything like it,” he recalls.“I went home and did some research and found he had put out a bunch of mix CDs.That’s where I started to learn about mixes and mixing.”That Christmas, Seth got a pair of turntables and some records, and became a DJ. Eventually, he outgrew it, yearning to create his own productions.This stemmed from the simple fact that there were things he wanted to hear that he wasn’t hearing anyone else doing. “I guess it was like,‘I can’t really find it, I’m gonna do it myself,’ ” he says. Ironically, he hated ’80s music when he was growing up.“I wanted nothing to do with the music,” he says.“But, I had this buddy I used to DJ drum and bass with. He was a big ’80s guy. He’d always be like,‘You gotta check this out’ or ‘Listen to this,’ and I was like,‘Blah, blah, blah.’ But, then one day I did, and I was like,‘Wow, I totally missed out on all this wonderful music.’ ” These days, his main studio setup consists of Eurorack synths (“the modular stuff”), a Rhodes Chroma, the Akai AX80, Elektron Machinedrum, the Roland Juno-106, and the Sequential Circuits Six-Trak.“I’m really trying to limit myself at the moment,” he says. In all, Haley has over twenty pieces of classic gear, and he’s still on the hunt for more (particularly an Elka Synthex). However, he’s currently taking a break from obsessive eBay searches, joking that the process is “somewhat of a money pit.” When I asked him which piece was his most treasured, he took a long pause. “That’s a tough one,” he replied. He settled on the Crumar Bit One, which he got refurbished from online synth retailer Tone Tweakers. “It looked like it had just rolled off a conveyor belt out of the factory. I was blown away when I unpackaged it. I plugged it in and started scrolling through the patches and was like, ‘Holy shit, nothing else sounds like this.’ I can’t even replicate this with analog or virtual stuff,” he says.“It’s a crazy synthesizer.” Speaking of virtual stuff, Haley admits that contrary to popular belief, he’s not completely a hardware guy. “I like both,” he says, noting that he’s especially fond of software when it comes to “stabby bass sounds.” “With hardware, I can’t control it the way I want. Or, maybe I haven’t figured it out,” he says. “Depends on the day. Sometimes, I don’t wanna goof around too much. I just want to sit there and work.” In the heated debate on software versus hardware, Haley doesn’t take sides. “I skate in the middle. Who cares what you use? If you’re comfortable with it, if it makes you happy, if you get what you want, use it. Whatever you want.”
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