This is the song that turned me on to Torn Hawk. Born to Win (Life After Ghostbusters) is 15 minutes of blurry cyberpunk guitar bliss.

It was one of those out-of-the-blue eureka moments, shared by a random friend on last.fm. Remember how great a social network that was before they killed groups last year? I still miss it.

The visuals are almost as important as the song itself, a vital component of the experience. This video is the full realization of the artist’s original warped VHS dream aesthetic, a magnum opus of design synergy. Torn Hawk, aka Luke Wyatt, is as adept at manipulating video as he is at carving gorgeous melodies from slabs of noise.

As he told Pitchfork in an interview, “Appropriating B-movie content for videos often puts you in the position of making fun of people, but I hope that the context I deploy it in sets me apart from that kind of crippling ironic distance. My videos aim to be statements of deep sincerity.” I completely believe him.

As the years have passed, his much has become more refined, his aesthetic more boldly earnest. He’s taken the embryonic concepts birthed here and grown with them. His latest, Union and Return, was the best thing I heard last week.