i started experimenting with music when i was in about sixth or seventh grade
my mother was a nurse and i used to beg her to bring me home the biohazard stickers at
that same moment i was very uh much into the chemical brothers so i would put a sticker
on each of the you know the cd cases and and i would play these chemical brothers cds and
with the other cassette recorder i literally banged on pots and pans adding like
extra percussion over you know block rocking beats and i had this you know department store
keyboard and i would kind of just riff over the top of chemical brothers songs and record them
and i called them my biohazardous beats that was my first kind of foray into uh making music
hi i'm seth haley and i'm also known as com truise
i like to call my music mid-fi synthwave slow-motion funk
but to simplify it let's call it downtempo electronic music for the most part with my
music i'm trying to tell these interesting narratives that i create in my mind
it's like making a movie but just with the sound
i would say i'm a computer nerd i fell in love with computers and i loved music before that and
then when i realized you could use computers to make music it was like inseparable you know the
first tools with making music i believe using hammerhead rhythm station which was basically
just kind of a freeware drum machine you know it had the amen break and lots of lots of
vintage drum uh you know breaks in it actually i remember early on i used to use sonic foundry acid
i remember i used to ask for my birthday and things like that for these loop cds and you'd
get this you know it would just be full of drum tracks and bass lines and i would just build
stuff that way it didn't take very long before i realized that i want to be a dj i begged and
begged and begged i remember for one christmas i finally got a set of new mark turntables and
a mixer and i had two records so for a very very long time i mixed those four sides back and forth
into each other i could mix those records still today i think that's what really made me try to
think about this is you know as more than a hobby that's something that i would like to really
you know focus on i started a little to do an online radio show just kind of being involved
in that scene and really getting into the forums like dogs on acid and things like that
it really sparked my interest in writing my own music to dj on my radio show so that's what i did
i um was working in advertising and i had a a close friend that i worked with and
he was always trying to push the 80s on me he's like you got to check out these tracks all this
synth pop stuff and i was like okay okay okay and i finally did and i was like yeah you know
i've heard some of these before you know i grew up with some of it when i actually started to
listen and focus on it it wasn't so much the music itself or the songs
it was the sounds contained within the songs is really what i fell in love with
i remember hearing a drum sound and being like i want to make something with that drum sound
and then that just kind of i really just went from there and i just wanted to get my hands on
anything that i could to create sounds in that same way
i think the main thing that separates me from some of my peers is that i
didn't necessarily want to sound like i was writing 80s music i wanted to take the technology
used in you know that decade and even some technology from from earlier decades and try to
make something new with it use familiar sounds but make them just different enough to sound new
i was pretty happy working in advertising i was making great money and
um my parents were very proud of just that you know and then when i started to write
this com truise stuff i kind of put some stuff online and it literally just took off
i remember sitting in the office in my cubicle uh one day i got a message from
one of my favorite artists uh who you know who was known as neon indian i really really
you know loved his music and it was you know they were asking for a remix and i was like blown away
and in a very short period of time i um you know i had to give up advertising
and i remember the conversation with my parents they were pretty angry with me and it took him
a long time to be comfortable with my career choice i think it wasn't until they came down to
to manhattan and i had a sold out show at the bowery ballroom i think that was the moment that
kind of put them at ease and you know they approved of it and that was huge for me but
you know and not everyone has that and i i don't take that moment for granted at all
i think one of my my proudest moments was you know getting my music uh pressed to a vinyl record
early on in this this project that was really my only goal
put out a final uh cyanide sisters when i first i remember getting in the mail you know from the
label from ghostly and i was just like this is incredible i can't believe i get to physically
hold my music it's tangible people are gonna buy it like that's insane you know and it's
still insane to me today i try to remember that feeling as much as possible whenever writing
and every time a vinyl comes out it's it's i get that same feeling it's just like how
how do i i'm so lucky to have the opportunity to do this and have the support from so many people
i hope that people find this inspirational their own way seeing how i work um and my my
my processes as artists we struggle with many things and at least myself i struggle with
giving myself deadlines and things like that and finishing things uh you know i think we
also struggle with over complication not feeling that something is adequate when it is perfectly
fine to keep it simple and i'm hoping to kind of convey that i am actively all of the time
trying to keep things simple with practice you know you can really kind of hone that skill and
that coupled with just kind of giving yourself realistic but deadlines is a very important
part of my process music for me is all about experimentation i like to think of it as a blank
canvas obviously as structured as i try to make this you know my music seem it's it's it's kind of
the the beauty and the chaos of it that it really keeps me inspired and the fact that there is no
necessarily right or wrong i have my specific processes that you'll see you know it's still a
blank canvas you know art is interpretable however you really want to interpret it