De-thawing in the Jersey sunshine, I compute mid-fi synth-wave, slower-motion funk. Com Truise is one of the many personas of producer and designer Seth Haley, born and raised in upstate New York and operating out of a 12’-overrun apartment in Princeton, New Jersey. An admitted synth obsessive, Com Truise is the maker of an experimental and bottom heavy style he calls “mid-fi synth-wave, slow-motion funk”. Haley’s been making music on the side for roughly a decade—going through pseudonyms like toothbrushes (Sarin Sunday, SYSTM, Airliner)—first as a DJ, and currently, as an excavator of softer, window-fogging synth-wave. While subliminally informed by both parental record collections and hints of faded electronics product design, Haley’s Com Truise project isn’t just nostalgia capitalization. There are fragments (read: DNA strands) of Joy Division, New Order, and the Cocteau Twins, but it’s like you’re hearing them through the motherboard of a waterlogged Xbox—demented and modern. He’s got a way of making familiar things sound beautifully hand-smeared. The first Com Truise release was the Cyanide Sisters EP—distributed for free on the AMdiscs label—where mellow stone-outs like “Sundriped” and “Slow Peels” sat next to harder IDM bangers (“BASF Ace” and “IWYWAW”) and bumpy alt-funk trips (“Norkuy” and “Komputer”). After that came a single “Pyragony/Trypyra,” and a series of eclectic podcast mixes titled “Komputer Cast.” Now comfortably situated amidst the Ghostly roster, he’s prepping his next warped pillage, and hopefully not changing that name again.

Combining the fluid, reconstructed beats of late-era British bass music with lush/dense harmonies, it's been hard to miss Jack Grace's singular production style vibrating through the Australian underground over the past 18 months. Filtered through a prism of forward-thinking artists as well as his own releases, Grace's surreal blend of hazy VHS soul and footwork beats first attracted attention with 2016's River, with his last single, 'All Lost' championed by peers and tastemakers Flume, Nick Murphy and Kllo. Jack Grace's forthcoming collection, EP2/ HOLD OUT, marks him as an Australian producer not just to watch, but to feel. A study in solitude, it's also the sound of discovering lightness through the dark. "I don't have hangups about writing sad stuff because it was always something I related to when I was younger," Grace laughs. "It makes me feel good!" It's certainly not the first time Australia's heard from the Newcastle-born musician, whose deft touch extended across multiple releases last year. As a producer, arranger and music director, Grace's unique magic could be found underpinning new material from Ngairre ('Blastoma') BUOY ('Immersion + Break eps'), alongside fellow aural adventurer, Christopher Port. Having trained as a classical and jazz pianist from an early age, Jack Grace has always embraced his ability to pull at the edges of sound, falling somewhere between the sonic wizardry of James Blake and challenge of bandleaders like Bill Evans. "Jazz players really affected the attitude in which I approached songs, where the harmony never becomes stagnant," he explains. "You almost have to sit forward for a second [to get it], to me, there's so much beauty in that." Written between Grace's Sydney homes studio upstate New York and Marseille EP2's gorgeous experimentalism is likely to make even more listeners lean in and pay attention. Candid songwriting set to beats that draw you in, as only Jack Grace's music can....

ginla is the cross-border collaboration between Jon Nellen and Joe Manzoli.   The duo originally met in 2012 while recording with Nick Hakim for his first two EPs. After cutting their teeth as sidemen for Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief) and Lorely Rodriguez (Empress Of) the boys set out to start a new project distinctly their own.   ginla’s self-titled debut EP was released less than a year ago on Terrible Records. Their intimate, homespun synth-pop reflected disparate influences and emotions: dream-pop, drum’n’bass, elation and isolation — these contradictions are what make ginla tick.   Codex, ginla’s debut LP, shows the duo dipping deeper and streamlining their unique sound. Suffusing benchmarks of the UK electronic tradition through their pillow-talk pop, Codex opens up a world both iridescent and grounded. Echoes of Brian Eno’s resplendent ambiance curl up against flickering drum’n’bass breaks and the wide-open release of Four Tet’s garage house. ginla’s alchemical production, and Show Me the Body and Wet collaborator Andrew Sarlo’s crystalline efforts on the mixing board, weave these threads into precious, timeless pop on Codex.