Com Truise premieres ‘Beta Eyes,’ set to debut on Ghostly International

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Though the Internet has sparked a certain decentralization of the music industry, some things are immutable. Specifically, Los Angeles’ role as an oasis for labels attempting to leverage the city’s deep pool of musicians, entertainment industry contacts and utopian weather (traffic is a different story).

The venerable Beggars Group (the corporate parent of Matador Records, XL Recordings, 4AD and Rough Trade) recently announced the opening of new West Coast offices in Silver Lake. Three years earlier, the Anticon label, best known as a Bay Area-based hub of eccentric rap, announced a relocation to Los Angeles. Concurrently, electric powerhouse Ghostly International has started to slowly expand its regional footprint.

Though the label run by Sam Valenti IV still holds a dual residency in New York and its ancestral stomping grounds of Ann Arbor, Mich., it’s not entirely inaccurate to lump it under the L.A. sunbrella. Certainly the imprint behind techno maven Matthew Dear and beat junkie Gold Panda fits snugly into Los Angeles’ celebrated electronic scene. As does the latest Ghostly artist, Com Truise, who reps New Jersey but who draws from the same well of inspiration as the artists at the Low End Theory.

His autobiography sounds right: ‘Melting in the Jersey summer sun, I compute mid-fi synth-wave, slow-motion funk.’ The synthesis of influences is clear (Joy Division, New Order, Boards of Canada, Gary Numan, Cocteau Twins).

‘Beta Eyes,’ the B-side from the ‘Fairlight’ single dropping next week, neatly captures Haley’s aesthetic: a compromise between the immediate future and the anachronistic. It conjures a Macintosh nostalgia for futures dreamed up decades ago. Synthesizers bright as lasers and drums loose as dust. The full length, ‘Galactic Melt’ drops July 5. Ideal summer music.

-- Jeff Weiss

Download: (Pop & Hiss Premiere)
MP3: Com Truise-’Beta Eyes’