It Is What It Is CD

Last year, Greek prog house producer Stelios Vassilidous (perhaps better known under his Stel alias) used an interview to describe the process of creating a debut album as "a daunting task". It's perhaps a surprise, then, to find this long-awaited debut set runs to two discs and touches on many musical styles. The first disc boasts largely horizontal fare, impressively moving from glistening ambience to pulsing slow trance via classic IDM, sunny Balearica and Trentemoller-ish avant-pop. The second disc, meanwhile, ups the tempo to include warm, comfy and atmospheric takes on deep house, melodic tech-house, prog and broken beat. Clearly, making a decent debut album was easier than Stelios previously believed.