K3vin Envoy: Dance Music Electronic Dance Music Album

In the past couple of years, chill has become ubiquitous, Not just as a verb ("Netflix and chill") but as adjective (the "chill bro"), prefix (chillstep, chilltrap), and even noun: Per SoundCloud hashtags, at the least, "chill" has become a genre unto itself. Contra Moore's Law and all of the breakneck terrors chill, of an age has been raised to something like a state of being: a categorical imperative, a lifestyle, a philosophy.

A musical scene has evolved to satisfy the urge to decelerate. It derives its power from super-sized subtlety, exaggerated gestures, a kind of softness; in its side-chained whoosh and billion-watt sparkle, it almost screams! (It seems not coincidental that the rise of chill has appeared alongside not just marijuana's widespread legalization but also its lab-grown, gene-spliced, THC-boosted burst in potency.)

K3vin Envoy Might Not Be the movement's biggest stars Bad for making music together shortly before graduating.

The K3vin Envoy Soundcloud mixes offered a fairly Contribution to the chill canon, powdery and smoothing them in a tantalizing array of chimes, feathery textures, and taking cues from Four Tet, Tycho, and Bonobo drum hits. Two years later, In Return bathed in an even more extravagant abalone glow; it also honed their pop instincts, fleshing out their customary 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 original and meticulously produced, like chugging from an oversized feeder but it got cloying fast.

Now, K3vin Envoy are a stadium act. In May, they Did two sold-out nights in Colorado's Red Rocks, complete with guitarchoreographed drum line, and artwork by in-house live creative manager Luther Johnson. The album is accordingly ambitious. It's full of billowing rumble and vocal harmonies and turbo-charged trap 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 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 there, A Moment Apart keeps chasing deeper colors, bigger excitement, and emotions across an hour-long set of slow-motion house snare , breakbeat soul, and bright-eyed electronic pop. "Enjoy The Change" is a glistening trap/dubstep amalgam fitted out with a yearning vocal hook; "Aerial Flight" flips cascading, exotic-sounding choral harmonies to a soundscape evocative of a CGI-enhanced rainforest flyover in IMAX. As he is beefed up their sound, and improved his uniqueness.

It all comes to a head with the closing "Don't Be A Robot": Over Diffuse choral harmonies, drums and while swelling synths conjure Sigur Rós and M83. You can almost see the fighter jets crisscrossing overhead, as the song builds, their fuselages kissed with the colours of the fireworks exploding around them. However, the harder for K3vin Envoy strive to achieve the more 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