For “ProtoVision,” the new video from Kavinsky, that French electro producer who, Wikipedia informs me, “aims his music at 25-39 year olds,” and “whose production style is very reminiscent of the electro-pop film soundtracks of the 1980s,” director Marcus Herring has conjured the feel of a late night, neon-streaked joyride, wrapped in leather and sunglasses. Which is to say, it was clearly inspired by Drive, the movie that made Kavinsky’s music famous, thereby hurling us into a little feedback loop of pre-apocalypstic ’80s nostalgia. (“Repeating the same words over and over again, claimed Gertrude Stein, is the only way to make sure they will actually mean something different,” Kristin Dombek writes in “How to Quit,” an essay in the new issue of N+1 wherein, in the midst of heavy partying and Brooklyn gentrification, she takes deep comfort in a driving Ryan Gosling.)

There’s another Reagan-era reference in this video, however: the album is called Outrun, named, one assumes, after the classic 1986 racing video game. Which, in retrospect, explains Kavinsky’s whole schtick: fast, dark, Nintendo-ish, childish, vaguely criminal, slightly addicitve.

Outrun, I discovered, doesn’t just make for good music and a fun video game. Apparently, thanks to some scientists at UC Irvine, it’s also an actual car. And this litttle metaphorical ring road is completely complete.