Indian Wells is a producer from Southern Italy who has been making music for a few years now. A little over a year ago, he teamed up with Friends of Friends Records to release an EP called Where The World Ends. Now he’s back for a second go-round with Friends of Friends with Phase Transition EP.

On Indian Wells’ last EP, he was making some interesting experimental electronic music that was along the lines of artists like Daedelus or Four Tet. On Phase Transition, you can still hear a little bit of that style, but overall, we’ve got an EP that leans much heavier on house as an influence. It’s a little moody and melancholy in tone, but the common thread across these four tracks are the pulsing rhythmic patterns and the development of layers as each song progresses. There are only four songs on Phase Transition, but the shortest one, the title track is about four-and-a-half minutes long, and the longest, “Untitled,” comes in around seven minutes. This is notable because this EP is all about space, and the patience required to sit back and trust that Indian Wells is building to something. It’s a careful balance between keeping things moving and not forcing the song along before the right mood is established, but Indian Wells does a great job of finding just the right pace in his compositions. He doesn’t move so slow that you get bored with the music, but he doesn’t move so fast that everything just goes through the motions and passes you by before you can appreciate it. This is the type of EP that you want to listen to on headphones, so you can really get lost in it, so you can go back and forth between picking up the little details and just sitting back and letting the overall mood sweep over you.

Indian Wells is an interesting producer, and he’s shown us two different looks with two different EPs in two years. Phase Transition EP is a smart and emotional piece of instrumental electronic music.