James Devane: Searching for Useless Beauty

James Devane’s 2008 debut was a promising collection of abstract ambient sketches in the vein of Gas and Oval. But as quickly as he burst onto the scene, Devane loitered back into the ether. Aside from playing in the understated drone duo En, he kept a low profile and shied away from the lifestyle of a celebrated electronic musician.

Then in 2022, Devane unexpectedly returned to the spotlight with the full-length Beauty Is Useless. “Something happened and I just felt the drive to do it,” he says, when asked why he decided to bring back his eponymous project after so many years. “I had always wanted to drop some beats on my music, and I could do whatever I wanted since it was a solo album. It was really fun to do that and I got pretty stoked about it.” Pairing bilous pads and aloof techno beats, the record asserted his newfound prowess as a club producer. 

Devane’s recent album, Searching, picks up where Beauty is Useless left off. It employs sample cutting and arrhythmic sequencing to impressionistic, off-kilter ends. Across 16 tracks, minimal grooves clack beneath hazy synth bloops. Jumbled by custom-built Max for Live devices, there’s a controlled randomness to the record that allows it to feel shifty and alive. 

We recently caught up with the nomadic experimentalist to talk about his background in jazz guitar, return from the shadows, and love of Max for Live.

What was your road into music like? Did you start out with your eponymous project or were you making other music before this?

I’ve been a guitar player for a long time. I was really into jazz music and I went to college for jazz guitar. During that time in college, I got into electronic music. In high school, I was sort of making electronic music. But then in college, I got really into ambient stuff. It was a nice break from jazz, which is academic and serious. Ambient music was much more free and a nice balance for me.

After college, I made an ambient record and I sent that to this San Francisco label called Root Strata. They didn’t put it out, but I became friends with this guy Maxwell (August Croy) who co-ran it. Then, we started a group called En. We put out a few ambient, drone, and experimental kinds of records.

I always really liked the ambient techno stuff that came out of Germany in the early 2000s and late ‘90s, like Kompakt and Mille Plateaux. So I always wanted to try making music like that. I put out a record where I tried that and then this latest one. The source material was similar. But I wanted it to sound a bit different, so I made this whole Max for Live program to just totally randomize it. It came out sounding completely different, so I’m pretty stoked about it.

How do you feel like Searching and Beauty is Useless sit next to each other as albums?

To me, it’s a natural progression. The source material of Searching I made pretty much exactly the same way as Beauty is Useless, to the point where I was a little concerned that it sounded too similar. That’s how I came up with the idea of randomizing it all. I didn’t know how that was going to work, but the results came out so different that I got pretty excited about it. At the core, the source material is very, very similar.

What, typically, is your source material?

I have this really broken Farfisa Compact organ. I have to plug it in with paperclips and stuff. It doesn’t even have a plug. And then I have a Fender Rhodes and two Korg Volcas. And I process all that with modular or in Ableton or Max/MSP.

Could you talk about the recording process for Searching?

I did most of it just with that gear — mostly modular stuff. My modular hooks into Ableton, so I just recorded that multitrack style. And this Max for Live patch that I wrote takes all the files, and my jams went in this giant folder. Then, the plugin will pull those files at random and choose a random start position and randomly choose to play it forwards or backwards at a random speed. So it just kind of mashes all these files together. Most of the time, it sounds terrible. But every once in a while, there’s something that works out. It would export to different tracks on Ableton so then I could mix it later. The majority of my time working in Live is figuring out how to make all the different controls move on their own and then seeing what comes out of the chaos of that.

What is the Max for Live device you’re sharing with us?

It’s inspired by the eurorack module Pamela's Workout. The ParamSeq device lets you map up to 16 envelope generators to any Ableton parameter, and build rhythms with each using Euclidean sequences.

Download James Devane’s free ParamSeq Max for Live device

Instructions: 1. Drop ParamSeq.axmd into an audio or MIDI track. 2. Click the “+” button to add a modulator. 3. Map it to a parameter. 4. Dial in an envelope. 5. Make a sequence. 6. Repeat up to 16 times for complicated sound designs and beats.
*Requires Live 11 Suite or higher

Are there any tips of tricks you have for incorporating modular synths with Ableton?

I had this module by a company called Expert Sleepers, which is an interface that connects with it. For the most part, I don’t integrate the two very much. When I’m making music, I’m just hitting record on Ableton. And then later I go back and mix in there. I know you can do a lot with Ableton to control the modular, but I don’t do too much of that.

How much of what you do happens inside the box versus outside of the box?

Beauty is Useless I recorded almost entirely without a DAW, just because I’m a software engineer and it’s nice to not look at a screen. But then I did all the final mixing in a DAW. Searching was much more in Ableton because it’s all based on this plugin. And now I’m a full-time traveler, so I’m making everything entirely in Ableton and Max.

Follow James Devane on Bandcamp

Text and interview: Ted Davis