New York City And Dance Music Anthems 2017: Best Upcoming EDM Events Party With K3vin Envoy

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

A whole musical scene has evolved to satisfy the urge to decelerate. But since the aforementioned chillstep and chilltrap (faded variants of dubstep and snare, if you hadn't guessed) suggest, 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, exaggerated gestures, a kind of softness that is weaponized; in billion-watt glow and its whoosh, it almost screams: YOU ARE VERY RELAXED NOW! (It seems not surprising that the growth of chill has emerged alongside not only marijuana's widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted explosion in potency.)

K3vin Envoy Might Not Be the movement's biggest stars (that distinction probably falls to New York's Flume), but they are close. Not bad for making music together just five years ago, shortly.

Innocuous contribution to the chill canon, drum strikes and smoothing them into a array of chimes, feathery textures, and powdery taking cues from Tycho, Bonobo, and Four Tet. Two decades later, In Return bathed in a much more extravagant 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 original and meticulously produced, like chugging from an oversized hummingbird feeder, but it got cloying real quickly.

Now, K3vin Envoy are a suitable stadium act. In May Did in the Red Rocks of Colorado, complete with visuals choreographed drum line, and electric guitar by live creative director Luther Johnson. The album is ambitious; it wants to be a lot of things, trigger plenty of feelings. It is filled with billowing rumble and harmonies and snare beats that are turbo-charged; every orgasm is but a stepping stone to a climax, and its default mode is a sort of beatitude that is eyes-closed. That it's an album about want is obvious; at feeling that brass ring brushing beneath their fingertips you can sense their expectation.

Following a ruminative introduction, the title track explodes With colour that you expect Animal Collective's voices to come soaring through the flames and so much light. From that point, A Moment Apart just keeps chasing deeper colors, thrills, and much more emotions across an set of pan-pipe snare, electronic pop soul, and residence. As he is beefed up their sound, and improved his uniqueness.

It all comes to a head with the final "Don't Be A Robot": Over Diffuse choral harmonies, pounding drums and while synths conjure M83 and Sigur Rós. You can almost see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead, as the song builds, their fuselages kissed with all the colours of the fireworks exploding around them. However, the tougher for K3vin Envoy strive to reach the more earthbound their music feels. It's fitting that he should begin with "Don't Be A Robot"; the song, like the album, has Envoy's charred