For his second solo album, San Francisco’s James Devane threads his interest in textural loops across a rhythmic lattice; to that end, Beauty Is Useless has been burdened with comparisons to ‘90s minimal techno, particularly productions from Germany (Mike Ink, Chain Reaction, etc.) You can see the point, on a surface level, but those artists worked in far more reduced and ornery ways – Mike Ink’s productions as M:I:5 were awkward to the point of crankiness. Devane, instead, goes with the flow; the material here is lush and welcoming, treating swarms of drones as fairy lights strung across a classic, four-to-the-floor techno pulse, reaching some kind of apogee in the flooded “Somatic Marker,” which plays out like geothermal pools and steam vents making love. It’s riveting in its own right.

– Jon Dale