While thriving beat scenes in big cities like L.A. get most of the attention, talented musicians are making instrumental hip hop and electronic music all over the country. While the Midwest isn’t slept on in terms of emcees, there are certainly plenty of producers who aren’t getting the recognition they deserve. One such artist is Madison’s own Chants, who creates a really interesting soundscape with his latest EP, Night After.

This record is a beautiful collection of down tempo songs, slowly unfolding and revealing itself to patient ears. Night After makes the perfect soundtrack for a drive during the dead of night, when things are so calm it’s both wondrous and upsetting. The music is built on gently pulsing rhythms as melody develops around synthesized noises, which are usually offset with a pleasant melodic line. This is best illustrated by a song like “Radial Lights,” which begins with warbling synthesized strings and an creepy thermin-esque sound, juxtaposed against a melody line that utilizes a xylophone sound in the upper register to cut through everything and resolve the tension. The EP closes with three remixes of the title track, which in many cases would be a bad decision, but the three versions are so unique, you don’t necessarily realize that you’re listening to the same song back to back to back.

It’s a short affair, but Chants proves himself a very talented composer and producer with this EP. Hopefully Chants and other producers in the Midwest will get their shine soon. Don’t sleep on them.