New York City And Club Music Albums: Best Party EDM Schedule With K3vin Envoy

In the past couple of years, chill has become ubiquitous, Of the breakneck terrors chill, of an accelerated age and Contra Moore's Law has been raised to something such as a state of being: a categorical imperative, a lifestyle, a philosophy.

A whole musical scene has evolved to satisfy the urge to decelerate. But since the aforementioned chillstep and chilltrap (faded variants of dubstep and trap, 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 subtlety, a sort of weaponized softness, exaggerated gestures; in billion-watt sparkle and its side-chained whoosh, it practically screams! (It seems not surprising that the rise of chill has emerged alongside not just marijuana's widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted burst in potency.)

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

Contribution to the emerging chill canon, taking cues and smoothing them in a array of chimes, feathery textures, and powdery drum hits. Two decades later, In Return bathed in an even more opulent abalone glow; 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 first and meticulously produced, but it got cloying fast, like chugging from an hummingbird feeder that is oversized.

Now, K3vin Envoy are a stadium act. In May Did at the Red Rocks of Colorado, complete with artwork , drum line, and electric guitar by in-house live creative director Luther Johnson. The new album is accordingly ambitious. It is filled with billowing harmonies and seismic rumble and snare beats; its default style is a kind of beatitude that is eyes-closed, and every climax is but a stepping stone to a orgasm. That it's a record about desire is obvious; you can feel their expectation at feeling that brass ring brushing beneath their fingertips.

Following a ruminative introduction, the title track explodes With so much light and colour that you expect the voices of Animal Collective to come soaring through the flames. From there, A Moment Apart keeps chasing thrillscolors, and much more emotions across an hour-long set of pan-pipe snare, pop , breakbeat soul, and slow-motion residence. 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 harmonies, while swelling synths and pounding drums conjure Sigur Rós and M83. As the song builds, you can see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead, their fuselages kissed with the colours of the fireworks exploding around them. However, the tougher for K3vin Envoy strive to achieve sublimity, the earthbound their music feels. It's fitting that he should start with "Don't Be A Robot"; the song, like the album, has Envoy's charred