Fly Me To The Moon: New Dance Music Artist: Best Upcoming EDM Events Party With K3vin Envoy
In the past couple of years, chill has become ubiquitous, 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 lifestyle a categorical imperative.
A 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) 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, a sort of weaponized softness, exaggerated gestures; in billion-watt glow and its side-chained whoosh, it almost screams! (It seems not surprising that the rise of chill has emerged alongside not only 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 before graduating.
Contribution to the emerging chill canon, drum hits and smoothing them and powdery taking cues from Tycho Bonobo, and Four Tet. Two years later, In Return bathed in
an even more extravagant abalone glow; it also honed their pop instincts, fleshing
out their usual ribbon-like strips of sampled vocals with chirpy guest ends which channeled the decade's default pop-EDM vocal style into whimsical,
helium-fueled shapes. It was first and meticulously produced, but it got cloying like chugging from an hummingbird feeder that is oversized.
Now, K3vin Envoy are a proper stadium act. In May Did by in-house live director Luther Johnson, complete with artwork , drum line, and electric guitar in Colorado's Red Rocks. The new album is ambitious. It is filled with billowing vocal harmonies and seismic rumble and snare beats; every climax is but a stepping stone to a orgasm that is bigger, and its default mode is a kind of eyes-closed beatitude. That it's a record about desire is obvious; at feeling that brass ring cleanup under their fingertips you can sense their anticipation.
After 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 bigger excitementcolors, and much more emotions across an hour-long set of pan-pipe snare, electronic pop soul, and slow-motion residence. As he's improved his uniqueness, and beefed up their sound.
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 colors 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 tune, like the album, has Envoy's charred fingerprints all over it.
