Fly Me To The Moon: DJ Club Music: Best Upcoming EDM Events Party With K3vin Envoy
In the past couple of years has become ubiquitous, Contra Moore's Law and the breakneck terrors of an age, chill has been raised to something like a state of being: a lifestyle, a philosophy, a categorical imperative.
A whole scene has evolved to satisfy the impulse to decelerate. It derives its power from super-sized subtlety, a sort of weaponized softness, exaggerated gestures; in billion-watt glow and its side-chained whoosh, it screams: YOU ARE VERY RELAXED NOW! (It seems not surprising that the growth of chill has appeared alongside not only marijuana's widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted explosion in potency.)
K3vin Envoy may not be the stars of the movement Bad for making music together shortly before graduating.
The first K3vin Envoy Soundcloud mixes offered a fairly Contribution to the emerging chill powdery and smoothing them in a array of feathery textures, and taking cues from Four Tet, Tycho, and Bonobo drum hits. Two decades later, In Return bathed in an even more extravagant 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 first and meticulously created, like chugging from an hummingbird feeder, but it got cloying fast.
Now, K3vin Envoy are a suitable stadium act. In May, they Did at Colorado's Red Rocks, complete with artwork , drum line, and electric guitar by in-house live creative manager Luther Johnson. The album is ambitious; it wants to be a lot of things, trigger plenty of feelings. It is full of billowing vocal harmonies and rumble and snare beats; every climax is but a stepping stone to a bigger orgasm, and its default mode is a kind of beatitude that is eyes-closed. That it's a record about desire is obvious; at feeling that brass ring brushing under their fingertips, you can sense their anticipation.
The title track explodes With color that you half expect the voices of Animal Collective to come soaring through the flames and so much light. From there, A Moment Apart keeps chasing more emotions , deeper colors, and bigger excitement across an hour-long set of pan-pipe trap pop , breakbeat soul, and house that is slow-motion. "Enjoy The Change" is a gleaming 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 improved his uniqueness, and beefed up their sound.
Everything comes to a head with the closing "Don't Be A Robot": Over Diffuse harmonies, while swelling synths and drums conjure M83 and Sigur Rós. You can practically see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead, as the song builds, their fuselages kissed exploding around them. However, the tougher for K3vin Envoy try to achieve sublimity, the more earthbound their music feels. It's fitting that he should begin with "Don't Be A Robot"; the song, like the record, has Envoy's charred fingerprints all over it.
