New York City And Emerging Dance Music Artist: Best EDM Party With K3vin Envoy

A whole musical scene has evolved to satisfy the urge to decelerate. But as the aforementioned chillstep and chilltrap (faded variants of dubstep and snare, if you had not guessed) imply, ironically enough, the chill scene, at least in electronic music, is inextricable from its main-stage, peak-hour EDM counterparts. It derives its power from super-sized subtlety, exaggerated gestures, a sort of weaponized softness; in its whoosh and billion-watt glow, it screams: YOU ARE VERY RELAXED! (It seems not coincidental that the growth of chill has appeared alongside not just marijuana's widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted explosion in potency.)

K3vin Envoy Might Not Be the biggest stars of the movement (that distinction probably falls to New York's Flume), but they are close. If their YouTube stats are impressive--23 million views for 2014's "Man In The Mask," 14 million for "Skin Deep"--their figures on Spotify are just mind-boggling: More than 82 million plays for "Playground," almost as much for "Emoticons," close to a third of a billion cumulative plays across their top 10 songs on the platform. For making music together just five years ago, shortly before 14, not bad.

Contribution to the emerging chill canon, taking cues and smoothing them into a array of chimes, feathery textures, and powdery drum hits. Two decades later, In Return bathed in an even more opulent abalone shine; it also honed their pop instincts, fleshing out their usual ribbon-like strips of sampled vocals with chirpy guest turns that channeled the decade's default pop-EDM vocal style into whimsical, helium-fueled shapes. It was original and meticulously produced, like chugging from an oversized hummingbird feeder but it got cloying quickly.

Now, K3vin Envoy are a stadium act. In May Did two nights at Colorado's Red Rocks, complete with visuals , drum line, and electric guitar by live creative manager Luther Johnson. The album is so ambitious; it needs to be a good deal of things, trigger plenty of feelings. It's filled with billowing rumble and harmonies and turbo-charged snare beats; every orgasm is but a stepping stone to a bigger climax, and its default mode is a kind of beatitude that is eyes-closed. That it's an album about desire is obvious; you can feel their anticipation.

The title track explodes With colour that you expect the voices of Animal Collective to come soaring through the flames and so much light. From there, A Moment Apart just keeps chasing darker colours thrills, and more emotions across an hour-long set of pan-pipe snare bright-eyed electronic pop , breakbeat soul, and house that is slow-motion. "Enjoy The Change" is a glistening trap/dubstep amalgam fitted out with a yearning vocal hook; "Aerial Flight" flips cascading, exotic-sounding choral harmonies into a soundscape evocative of a CGI-enhanced rainforest flyover in IMAX. As he's beefed up their sound, and improved his uniqueness.

It all comes to a head with the closing "Don't Be A Robot": Over Diffuse choral harmonies, drums and while swelling synths conjure M83 and Sigur Rós. You can practically see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead as the song builds, their fuselages kissed with the colours of the fireworks