In 2011, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive swerved into the cultural conversation. With its long, endless shots of Ryan Gosling cruising broody along wet, neon soaked L.A streets, the moody neo-noir arrived at the crest of the aesthetic revival that would come to be known as synthwave. An essential part of Drive’s zeitgeist defining success was its soundtrack, an expertly curated collection of moody, retro-tinged synthpop and wistful italo melodrama that is largely credited to Johnny Jewel. For Drive, Jewel pulled from his own music with the Chromatics and Glass Candy, though few tracks had as big an impact as Nightcall, the eery, glowing mid-tempo synth-ballad by then lesser known French producer Kavinsky. Desperately romantic and ever slightly so dangerous, Nightcall’s inclusion as the soundtrack to Drive’s opening credits has come to be regarded as one of the most iconic and impactful moments in modern cinema.
Drive would ultimately thrust Nightcall and Kavinsky at the forefront of the synthwave movement, both becoming an essential point of departure for what was to follow. Yet, after his 2013 debut LP OutRun, Kavinsky mostly retreated. A string of EP’s followed, but there was a sense that the artist was grappling with the expectation for another Nightcall. Reborn, his sophomore album and first full length in nearly a decade, arrives this far into Kavinsky’s career likely to avoid the peak of those expectations. Tellingly, Reborn is somewhat of a departure sonically from the metallic retro-futurism of OutRun. The album sees the producer playing with less abrasive styles of synthpop and 80’s funk, delivering a new side to him that’s always been there but had mostly slipped under the wheels of Nightcall.
This side of Kavinsky is markedly less propulsive. Reborn is an album of mid-tempo slow burners that reveal themselves gradually. Lead single Zenith hinted at this shift, a lovesick 80’s power ballad with a waning sax and power guitar chords. Kavinsky’s growling analog synths recall Nightcall on this track, but their application here speaks toward the full range of his sonic palette. Tracks like Renegade and Plasma also take the power ballad route, though these are epic in scope. The former is scored with strong piano chords and a funk groove accented with sci-fi analog synths. Cameo is surprisingly current, a breezy electro-funk track that is the closest to modern pop that Kavinsky has ever sounded, possibly due in part to it recalling the recent synthwave adjacent work of The Weeknd. It’s a formula that works for Kavinsky, and why shouldn’t it? He’s arguably an essential player in the sound’s current popularity on Top40 radio.
Download and stream Reborn here
Elsewhere, the producer’s usual melancholia pulses through tracks like the piano ballad Goodbye, possibly Reborn’s most achingly romantic moment. Mostly absent is Kavinsky’s usual reliance on the car as a motif of human futurity. He instead explores the cyborg by other means, mostly through the melding of emotive organic instruments and laser sharp electronic production. On Trigger, strings echo the neon synths on a track that’s at once thrilling and breathless. On album closer and standout Horizon, the post-human is explored by means of the voice. Quiet, contemplative, and full of heartbreak, Horizon features a vocoder-processed voice chanting an aria like a forlorn cyborg against slowly oscillating synth chords. It’s a gorgeous idea of trans-human emotion, the kind that Kavinsky has made a name for himself doing best.
Reborn comes off as Kavinsky refining the Kavinsky formula, though his style mostly remains in the borderline kitsch territory of 80’s nostalgia, perhaps even more so with his newfound inspiration in vintage funk and pop motifs. His break away from the spotlight no doubt allowed the artist time to process his goals and desires for the future, and if anything he’s given himself room to truly evolve. “After the sudden success of ‘Nightcall,’ I didn’t really want to record again,” he recently revealed in a statement. “I took two steps back and started to imagine what I was going to record after that, at my own pace. The break allowed people to forget about me for a little bit so that when I felt ready to return, I could perhaps try new things.” Those new things come to life on Reborn, and make a case for the next phase of his career being one where he hones in on the groundwork he laid that others have come to follow.
Watch the music video for Cameo from Reborn below.
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