Electro star talks cinematic albums, Daft Punk and why he hates happy music

Kavinsky - known to his family as Vincent Belorgey, can thank Ryan Gosling (in part) for a boost in awareness of his work in recent years. Kavinsky was the subject of furious Google searches across the globe after his track 'Nightcall' was used in Gosling's hugely popular movie, Drive.

Now the spectacularly retro and cinematic full-length album Outrun has arrived and Kavinsky is a man who has no doubt in his mind about what he's doing and how he's doing it.

We caught up with him to talk about waiting seven years to release his first album, being mates with Daft Punk and the current goings on in French electro scene...

You got started in music in 2005, and have released three EPs, but Outrun is your first album. Were you waiting for the right time?

You might also like... Love Daft Punk? Check out ten more artists you need in your life Kavinsky - Outrun (Mercury) Everybody is thinking I was just in my studio looking at my keyboard for seven years. It wasn't actually like that. I just decided after we did 'Nightcall' with Guy-Manuel [De Homem-Christo] from Daft Punk that I had something very solid to really start the album with. So I worked at it for maybe a year and a half, two years. Everything’s been ready for about a year, but it takes time. It's been a cool wait to finally release it. I'm very happy about the worldwide release. But I wasn't working for seven years, so for all the people who are going to say, 'Wow, seven years for this?' No. That's not how it's been.

There are some older tracks, taken from my EPs, but for me it's quite pretentious to say 'That's a famous track’ and present it again.Thanks to Drive I've got a bigger audience, but it doesn't change my music and it doesn't change the way I'm doing it.

Did you feel you were under pressure at all from the fanbase you’d built with your three EPs?

Actually I thought it would be harder for me, because of the pressure. But it's a good pressure for me actually because I'm quite lazy. I work when I want. It's a luxury because I used to do shitty jobs for ten years. So I know what work is, I mean really proper work, not just being in a studio. I'm not one of those musicians who wants to work, wants to create every morning when I get up. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it’s bad. But I just want to release the good music, not to keep a schedule to release something every year to keep attention and keep doing something new. I'm lucky the first three EPs made a good impression.

Do you find you’re one of those musicians who makes far more tracks than they need? Is there a lot that didn’t make the cut?

Oh yeah, I did some tracks by myself and some with Sebastian the producer - and then that's the difficult moment. Say you have 25 tracks, with interludes and skits between, to keep the focus like I did, is hard. Like a movie, if it's too long it has to be really good, if it's not too long it has to be just good. Maybe it's pessimism on my part, I don't know.

Watch the video for new single 'ProtoVision' below

There’s quite a cinematic feel to Outrun, it seems to have a strong visual narrative attached to it. Is that something important to you when you’re making music?

Yeah, definitely. For me, working with images is helpful, from the start to the end. I can't accept creating something from nothing, it has to come from something. It could be an image, a video, song, a riff. But it always came from something I heard or saw. I'm like a sponge, I collect things.

Do you think having that visual elements makes people more likely to listen to a whole album in an age when Spotify and iPods mean people can pick out the songs they like?

It's hard to say. I don't want people to listen to my music like they read a book. It's just really cinematic music and it was, as Brad Pitt says, inevitable I would produce some images to give to people. But you can turn off the images and create your own narrative - to listen to it while you're buying bread and feel like a hero. But that's my way to give the story of that music.

Why do you think France has such a rich history for electro and dance music?

I'm French, so everybody's asking me 'You're French, what's the trick to electro pop?’ I don't know, you could ask a German what's the trick to techno.

I know Daft Punk, I know Justice, Paris is a small city, you can walk across it in two hours. It's just that everybody in Paris knows each other and people meet and sometimes they have something to share or do together. And that's good, it would be bad if all the musicians in Paris were enemies or rivals. I can't explain it, it's just like meeting someone at a bar and asking if they want a drink. It's the same with music, and that makes the scene grow.There's good music going on.

Watch the video for 'Dead Cruiser', which appears on Outrun and the 1986 EP

The album’s obviously got quite an 80s, retro vibe to it, but it’s also quite sinister and dark. Was that intentional?

The album is quite sad, but I wanted it to be. Sad is just the way music comes for me. I don't like happy music, making music for happy people or to make sad people happy. It's just not for me. Sad music is just my way to affect people. I always hated happy music, I just don't believe it, I don't feel it. But I always loved to cry at the cinema, of course I hide it because boys never cry. But I wanted it to be emotional music.

Listen to Kavinsky's 'Testraossa Autodrive' below

Do you think that YouTube, and the chance it’s given fans to make music videos for artists, means that people are now working with a closer relation between music and visuals?

The thing about YouTube is you can see very good things and very bad things. Sometimes you see ideas you really want to do, and others you see things you definitely don't want to do. It's a good reflector for life and helping you work out what you want to do or not do. Whether it means more people are linking music and film, I don’t know

Beyond your album release, what have you got planned for 2013? Are you going on tour?

I’m not really going on tour, not yet. I'm going to do a few DJ sets, because I need to get out and breathe. But I'm going to be in the studio for the next six months preparing the live show, I've just found a good, big team of friends, and it's a great family and we work together well. There's going to be smoke and lights and lasers, it’ll be a big show. I'll play some live shows when the live show's ready, but not just for now. I'm not thinking about the next record yet at all. Definitely not.

Listen to 'Nightcall', from the Drive soundtrack, below

Thank you very much, Kavinsky. Outrun is out now. Click here to read our review of the album.