Kavinsky

After years as an actor, Kavinsky's musical career started in 2005 after he was inspired by his close friends Jackson Fourgeaud and Quentin Dupieux. He acted in Dupieux's 2007 film Steak [fr]; the film also included Kavinsky's music. During this period, Kavinsky produced his first single "Testarossa Autodrive", which was inspired by the Ferrari Testarossa (one of which Belorgey drives in real life).^[5] Kavinsky presented the single to Dupieux, who in turn presented it to a record label he had access to because of his filming career, and Kavinsky signed with Record Makers.^[7][8]

Kavinsky went on to release three EPs on the Record Makers label: Teddy Boy in 2006, 1986 a year later, and Nightcall with Lovefoxxx of CSS in 2010.^[8] Kavinsky toured alongside Daft Punk, The Rapture, Justice, and SebastiAn in 2007.^[9]

The SebastiAn remix of "Testarossa Autodrive" off the 1986 EP is featured in the video games Grand Theft Auto IV and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.^[10] Kavinsky's single "Nightcall" was featured in the opening credits of the film Drive, and became a major hit soon after.^[9] In December 2012, he released "ProtoVision".^[11] On 25 February 2013, he released his debut studio album, OutRun.^[12] Prior to this release, some gaming news sites reported that Kavinsky's song "Nightride" would be featured along with his other music in a dedicated music channel within the Grand Theft Auto V video game, on an in-game synthwave radio channel called "Nightride FM".^{[13][14][15][16][17][18]} However, once the game was released, players discovered that the channel did not exist, and the game files did not contain any references to Kavinsky's music.

In November 2021, he returned from his seven year hiatus with the lead single "Renegade" from his second studio album Reborn.^[19] The song is produced by Gaspard Augé and Victor Le Masne. In March 2022, he released "Zenith", another single from Reborn which features vocals from Prudence and Morgan Phalen.^[20][21] In 2024, Kavinsky performed Nightcall alongside Phoenix and Angèle at the 2024 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in Paris.^[22]

Kavinsky is a character made by Belorgey that physically resembles Belorgey, but has red eyes and blue skin. The character's story is that after crashing his Testarossa in 1986, he reappeared as a zombie to make his own electronic music in 2006.^[7] Kavinsky's songs help tell his story; Belorgey once said, "'Night Call' is just about the zombie guy [who] goes to his girlfriend's house and says okay I'm not the same, we need to talk", referring to Kavinsky going back after the crash to find his girlfriend, who has already moved on with her life.^[8]

The character's backstory does not resemble Belorgey's real-life history. In an interview, he once said, "Kavinsky is a character I created because just putting my face on a record sleeve isn't something that suits me. [...] Showing my own face holds absolutely no interest for me. I'd much rather make music and tell a story, because for me music is linked to images. When I'm making music, I have images in my head of films and television shows I liked when I was little. So I created this story that mixes all those memories together."^[23]

In an interview, Kavinsky stated that the entirety of Teddy Boy was written and recorded on a Yamaha DX7, which is associated with the synth-pop sound of the 1980s.^[24] Kavinsky originally started making music on an old Apple computer given to him by his friend and fellow musician Quentin Depieux.^[8]