Audiopile Review: There are so many hidden talents waiting to be discovered in the hinterland of 21st-century glitch-drone music. James Devane is probably best known as one half of ambient duo En, alongside Maxwell August Croy. But with 2022’s ‘Beauty is Useless’, Devane made a slightly surprising detour into minimal techno. His new album, ‘Searching’ continues in that vein. ‘Beauty is Useless’ showed Devane to be an extremely accomplished avant-techno producer. On ‘Searching’, he develops upon those accomplishments without much concern for the conventions of his chosen genre, or any other. This album is in the damaged, decaying style of post-Actress, post-Andy Stott electronic music. But Devane brings his own soft-focus aesthetic to that style, recognizable from his days in En. These are understated, minimal tracks that betray an openness to the random and chaotic. But it’s clear that a lot of thought and rigour went into creating them.

James Devane returns with another adept investigation into minimal techno’s spaces in between. Searching serves as both companion to Beauty is Useless and the next logical step in James’ exploration of process as guiding compositional tool. Conceptually simple, technically robust, the end result elicits both an undeniable groove and a trove of detail for listeners willing to go deep. In his own words: “These recordings are the result of chance. Using hours of source material, everything was ‘chosen,’ manipulated, and assembled at random via custom software without concern for key, tempo, measures, or rhythm. A search button and a save button.”