The French musician and D.J. Kavinsky, who was best known for his 2010 megahit “Nightcall,” was found dead at his home in Paris on Tuesday. He was 50.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that Kavinsky, whose real name was Vincent Belorgey, was unresponsive when the authorities went to his home on Tuesday evening. The cause of death was under investigation, the office said, adding that emergency medical workers had “found no suspicious evidence at the scene.”
Representatives for Mr. Belorgey did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday.
The musician’s biggest track, “Nightcall,” was produced with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, a founder of the French electronic-music duo Daft Punk. The song featured on the soundtrack for the 2011 action movie “Drive,” which starred Ryan Gosling, and it has been covered and sampled by groups and artists including London Grammar, Childish Gambino and Phoenix and Angèle.
In 2024, Mr. Belorgey performed the song with the French band Phoenix and the Belgian pop singer Angèle at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics, introducing it to a new generation and leading to a surge in popularity on streaming services.
On Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron of France posted a tribute to Mr. Belorgey on social media, writing that he was “a source of French pride forever.”
Catherine Pégard, France’s culture minister, wrote on social media that with Mr. Belorgey’s death, “France has lost one of its most distinctive voices.”
“From the film Drive to the Paris Olympics, the entire world resonated with ‘Nightcall,’” she added. “At once danceable and nostalgic, his music will continue to transcend generations and borders.”
Vincent Belorgey was born on July 31, 1975, in Barbès, a neighborhood in northern Paris. His father sold photocopiers and socks, and his mother was a nurse, he told Le Parisien in 2022. No information was immediately available about his upbringing or survivors.
He began producing music in 2003 by chance, when a friend was about to throw out an old Macintosh computer but instead gave it to Mr. Belorgey.
“I was really into video games, and then he just gave me that computer,” Mr. Belorgey told Vice in 2013. “And from that I just started to make music with it, so that was the start of everything.”
Mr. Belorgey produced synth-heavy electro-pop music throughout the 2000s, drawing inspiration from 1980s movies and video games.
Like his fellow French electronic artists Daft Punk, Mr. Belorgey created a fictional persona. Kavinsky, whom Mr. Belorgey described in his first L.P. “OutRun,” released in 2013, was a teenager living in the 1980s who crashed a red Ferrari and returned decades later as a zombie on a mission to make electronic music.
“We are very similar, but you could say he is a little bit more badass than me,” he said to Vice of his alter ego. “We make the perfect balance, except he’s a little shier, yet also more badass. He’s maybe the guy I wanted to be. Along with just a way for me to make music.”
Mr. Belorgey released his second and final studio album, “Reborn,” in 2022, but he struggled to recapture the chart success he found with “Nightcall.” That year, he spoke to NME Magazine about how the song had haunted his career in subsequent years.
“After the sudden success of ‘Nightcall,’ I didn’t really want to record again at that moment,” Mr. Belorgey said at the time. “I sensed some pressure. I was scared. I was scared to imagine what my music was going to be after this success.”
After a break from music, he returned to recording his second album.
“It allowed me to breathe some fresh air,” Mr. Belorgey said of the pause. “It allowed me to think, and it allowed people to forget about me for a little bit so that when I felt ready to return, I could perhaps try new things.”
He told NME that after the break, he found pleasure again in creating songs with collaborators or by himself.
“It was a real joy,” he added. “My best time.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
