Kavinsky, the DJ behind Nightcall, found dead in Paris
French DJ Kavinsky, born Vincent Belorgey, was found dead in his Paris apartment on Tuesday. Prosecutors opened an inquiry, and first responders reported nothing suspicious at the scene.
French DJ and producer Kavinsky was found dead in his Paris apartment, and on July 29 a Paris prosecutor said an inquiry had been opened to establish the cause of death. The body was discovered on Tuesday, July 28. He was 50.
His real name was Vincent Belorgey, and he came from Saint-Denis. For two decades he worked under a stage name that had long since become a brand of its own, and he almost never performed as himself. The character he built was a zombie with red eyes and blue skin, the survivor of a Ferrari crash, and an entire discography grew around that figure.
The first teams to reach the scene reported nothing out of the ordinary.
“The teams that first intervened found no suspicious elements at the scene,” the Paris prosecutor said in announcing the inquiry.
Under the French system, this kind of investigation is routine and does not imply that a crime is suspected. No cause of death has been established, and the prosecutor’s office has given no timetable for one. The statement does not say who called for help or how much time passed between the death and the discovery of the body.
How Nightcall became a song everyone knows
Kavinsky made his debut in 2006 with the release “Teddy Boy,” but the turn came four years later. He put out “Nightcall” in 2010, produced together with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, one half of Daft Punk. It was a collaboration from the years when the duo was still active, well before their 2021 announcement that they were splitting up.
The track reached its widest audience through film. When Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” opened in 2011 with Ryan Gosling in the lead, “Nightcall” played over the opening sequence and stayed attached to the film ever after. From there it travelled a route few electronic records manage: out of the club circuit, into film iconography, and finally into the layer of pop culture where people know a song without knowing who made it.
A short discography, and that was the point
Kavinsky released only two albums after his 2006 debut:
- “OutRun” in 2013
- “Reborn” in 2022
Nine years separate them. Sixteen years passed between the debut release and “Reborn,” and in that span he put his name to two full-length records. He worked slowly and came back when he had something to release, which on a scene that stacks up new material every season made him the exception.
He had a screen career running alongside the music. He acted in Quentin Dupieux’s film “Steak” in 2007, and more recently appeared in the French Netflix series “Banger,” which is set in the world of DJs and electronic music.
His last big stage was the Olympics
The largest platform of his career came near the end of it. He performed at the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in front of a global television audience, on a night France used to showcase its own music scene. For an artist who had spent decades playing a zombie climbing out of a wrecked Ferrari, it was an unlikely finale.
News of his death came less than two years after that performance. The findings of the Paris prosecutor’s inquiry are still pending, and until they arrive there will be no official cause of death.
