Album Review

Kavinsky – Outrun

• 1st Feb 2013

With three heavyweight EP’s under his belt and the phenomenal success of single Nightcall thanks to cult movie Drive, Kavinsky is well on his way to becoming the current Godfather of the new wave of French Electro. It’s not hard to see why when you listen to debut album Outrun. There’s a distinct personality in Kavinsky’s music that sets him apart from the pack – a whiff of Daft Punk pervades, but where DP bring the party, Kavinsky prefers to take the lights down and tread a darker path. A lot of the tracks on Outrun are deep and oppressive, evocative of the brooding, dank techno and electro of contemporaries Gesaffelstein and Gatekeeper.

Nightcall is undoubtedly the star track here with its superb creeping beat and melancholic melodies, but there’s much more to Kavinsky than this one release to catapult him to stratospheric success. The sinister MCing on Suburbia makes a nice change from the uber compressed vocals that prevail on the rest of the LP, and the clean vocals on First Blood add another dimension that help stop the signature sound from stagnating.

Undoubtedly a child of the 80s, Kavinsky manages to evoke an epic and grandiose mental image of his youth through this album, fuelled by science fiction, Transformers and US culture. Something of a concept album about a teenager meshing souls with a “mysterious red car, its power lighting his eyes blood red” there’s also a sense of fun amidst the intense and rousing electro funk grooves and Kavinsky even manages to apply a metallic sheen to the whole album which gives the cybernetic back story some audible credibility. Interestingly, he also manages to avoid tipping over into cliché and this album never feels forced or tongue in cheek as it hammers forward for the most part at full throttle through a Tron-like fantasy soundscape of fast-lanes and arcade machines.

If you like your electronic music with a bit of light and shade this release probably isn’t for you, likewise if minimal is your thing, but if you’re the kind of person who likes to cruise around at midnight pretending they’re Knightrider (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) then Outcry is probably the album you’ve been waiting your whole life for. Shift the gear up, let the duelling guitars of First Blood flow through your veins and run a few red lights while this life affirming album sees Kavinsky joyfully romping through what he does best.

Venue: Outrun
Support Band: Mercury Records