Daft Punk’s influence on modern dance music is undeniable. Even more so, their influence on their home turf, the French electro-house scene, continuously pumps out new producers. It’s not a bad thing, in fact, all of them are awesome. You have Martin Solveig, with his radio ready poppy style, you have Justice, with their “D.A.N.C.E.” disco flavor, and now you have Kavinsky, the DJ straight out of an 80’s driving game.

Kavinsky, real name Vincent Belorgey, is most notable for his song “Nightcall” which was featured in the movie Drive. The song has gained him a large following and has been sampled by Lupe Fiasco and Childish Gambino. He has also put out three EPs and one single since 2006, and now, he’s finally compiled songs from those and a few new tracks to form his debut album, OutRun.

The album is named for the 1986 arcade driving game of the same title. The box for the OutRun game reads “High Action Road Racing Adventure!” If you’re interested in what the LP sounds like, it’s pretty much that. Persistent, pounding beats accompanied by wailing melodic electric guitars and polished retro synths. The man has a lot of style, and likes to put it into his music through some really cool sounds.

OutRun is a loose concept album, based on the silly concept that surrounds the producer’s identity. Basically, he’s a teenager who crashes his Ferrari Testarossa, and comes back to life as a red jacket wearing zombie who likes to produce cool dance music.

“Blizzard” and “Protovision” are both new songs, and are both astonishingly well produced tracks. They have character and color. Unfortunately, they’re some of the few songs on this album that do have those things. “Suburbia” is the lone track to feature any real vocals, and it’s some mediocre verses from the rapper Havoc. The hook is pretty catchy, but otherwise, it’s there. It highlights that some of these songs may just really need some vocals.

Other than “Nightcall” the rest of the album is generally pretty generic and repetitive club tracks. But, even as club tracks, they’re pretty bland. As much as I like Kavinsky’s sound and style, he needs to keep making more tracks and get better at writing stuff like “Blizzard” and “Protovision” which both have a lot of interesting and different pieces to them. For OutRun, it’s a 2.5 out of 5.