My Favourite Album: OutRun by Kavinsky
For the past few months I’ve been listening to the album OutRun by Kavinsky. This album is a great driving album, and a wonderful programming mix. As a fan of 80s and 80s inspired music, this album blends the best of modern French house music, with the classic sounds of 80s electro.
Kavinsky’s production style is very visceral and reminiscent of video game music and film soundtracks of the 80s.
The first track, Prelude, introduces the main character, a young male along with a red Ferrari Testarossa. After the introduction track we get the track 2 in the album, Blizzard, a punchy track with awesome synth-guitar riffs. This is easily one of my favourite tracks of all time, and certainly my favourite of the album. The guitar riffs combined with the hard-hitting bass drum kicks help set the tone of the album and Kavinsky’s style. Next, we get Protovision, another punchy track with an epic bass kick and fantastic synth lines. To me, Protovision is very reminiscent of the first Justice album, the stiff micro-sampled sounds make me think of tracks like Newjack, Phantom and DVNO. Fourth on the album is Odd Look, the first proper song of the album with vocals. Like the two preceding tracks, this song follows the trend of strong bass kicks and epic synth chords that are guaranteed to get anyone moving on the dance floor, or the office.
Next up is my second favourite track on the album, Rampage. Combining the mid and high-range synths with the solid bass drum kick, along with a muffled-sounding piano in the background, this is a fun track. I can imagine this track would be really epic when tied with a tough mission in a game like Call of Duty. After Rampage we get the rap track… Suburbia. While I can appreciate rap and hip-hop, I don’t really like the blend of rap and the 80s electro-synth this album is. Having said that, the story in the rap track does follow the theme of the album, talking about the character and his fast “Mars Red” Testarossa. After the rap track we have another punchy synth track, Testarossa Autodrive. I love the powerful synth riffs in this track, combined with the high-pitched synth that kicks in throughout the track, it’s a winner.
Nightcall, the eighth track in the album has great vocals and a sequenced synth. The robotic vocal doing the first part of each verse reminds me of Daft Punk’s robo-voice. I also find the female voice in the chorus to be hauntingly beautiful, combining great lyrics with a fantastic voice, I get chills every time I hear the chorus. Next up is Deadcrusier, a great warpy synth track with great deep synth riffs proving a nice bassey edge to the track. The warpy sounding synth hits home an epic track. Next is Grand Canyon, another of my favourite tracks. The super hard-hitting high-hats and synth lines make this track and epic track to listen to. I could easily listen to this track over and over again, the repetition of the track is catchy as heck!
After Grand Canyon is the track First Blood, an almost Van Halen influenced track with epic guitar lines. With a rock-themed vocalist and synth-guitar sounds this track is a rock epic. I have a feeling the solo was very Eddie Van Halen inspired. Next up is Roadgame which starts off with a great violin loop which changes pitch throughout the loops in the song. Combined with great synths and bass kicks, this is a fantastic track to bring us near the end of the album. Finally is Endless, the last track of the album brings the poignant story to a close with a nice piano loop and soft synths with a slow kick drum beat. The album is over :(
Oh yeah, and there’s a video game.
Please note that this is my first album review, my writing is sure to get better!