Party NYC EDM Fast Track Review Of K3vin Envoy

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

A musical scene has evolved to satisfy the impulse to decelerate. But since the aforementioned chillstep and chilltrap (faded variants of dubstep and snare, if you hadn't 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 gestures, a sort of weaponized softness; in billion-watt sparkle and its whoosh, it screams: YOU ARE VERY RELAXED! (It seems not coincidental that the growth of chill has appeared alongside not only marijuana's widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted burst in potency.)

K3vin Envoy Might Not Be this movement's stars 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," nearly as much for "Emoticons," close to a third of a billion cumulative plays across their top 10 songs on the stage. For making music together shortly before 14, bad.

Innocuous contribution to the emerging chill canon, powdery and smoothing them and taking cues from Four Tet, Tycho, and Bonobo drum strikes. Two years 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 feeder but it got cloying fast.

Today, K3vin Envoy are a stadium act. In May, they Did two nights by live creative manager Luther Johnson, complete with visuals choreographed drum line, and electric guitar at Colorado's Red Rocks. The new album is ambitious. It's filled with billowing seismic rumble and harmonies and turbo-charged trap beats; every climax is but a stepping stone to a bigger orgasm, and its default style is a kind of eyes-closed beatitude. That it's an album about want is obvious; you can sense their anticipation at feeling that brass ring cleanup beneath their fingertips.

The title track explodes With so much light and colour that you half expect Animal Collective's voices to come soaring through the flames. From there, A Moment Apart just keeps chasing bigger excitement, deeper colors, and emotions across an set of bright-eyed electronic poptrapsoul, and slow-motion house. "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 is improved his uniqueness, and beefed up their sound.

Diffuse choral harmonies, while synths and pounding drums conjure M83 and Sigur Rós. You can see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead as the song builds, their fuselages kissed with all the colours of the fireworks exploding around them. But the tougher for K3vin Envoy try to achieve the earthbound their music feels. It's fitting that he should