7 tracks. Running time 65:32 Kerry Leimer's latest album The Useless Lesson is a combination of constructed and deconstructed pieces (the downloadable one-sheet explains these terms) and includes Leo Abrahams, Dwight Ashley, and Anode on some tracks. The overall feel of the album is similar to previous works such as The Listening Room in that there are ambient classical forms, drones, and synthetic rhythmic sections. Sonically one will find much that is familiar here compared to previous albums by the artist. The difference lies more in the structure of the music and the details. Several of the tracks are what can be thought of as ambient-classical where the tones are quasi-orchestral with string and cello textures and the mood is often rather earnest. Take the first track “To Force Our Closed Eyes”. Mournful tones wax and wane while similar tones are stretched out into drones. Sparing piano notes then add to the atmosphere. In contrast “Declining Need of More” is more fully in drone ambient territory and is a piece of two halves. In the first half variously textured drones slowly throb and tunnel around each other in a manner reminiscent of Exuviae's piece “Silencia”. Then the tones change tack becoming brighter, higher pitched, and cloudily metallic. As the piece draws to a close distorted real world sounds are put together forming a sonic haze. There's something unique about Kerry's music that is hard to pin down. I think it's that the music, even when uptempo and rhythmic, is also very poised and precise. In lesser hands this would be boring but instead it has a je nai sais quois keeping the listener's interest. The Useless Lesson is a work of precisely crafted ambient art where all the sonic moves slot into place like pieces of a finely constructed jigsaw. Sublime, classical, abstract, lonely, and mathematical are just some of the words that it evokes.