Mike Lévy was born in Lyon, France, in June 1987. He started producing music at the age of sixteen when he first played an analog synthesizer. He released his first EP in 2008 through the label OD Records. In July 2012, Gesaffelstein made the cover of DJ Mag with Brodinski. The same year, his track "Viol" is used by Citroën and Givenchy advertisings. He co-produced two tracks on Yeezus, the sixth album of American rapper Kanye West, including the lead single "Black Skinhead" and "Send It Up", both tracks produced with Kanye West, Daft Punk, Brodinski and Mike Dean. On October 28, 2013, Gesaffelstein released his debut albumAleph under Parlophone Records and OWSLA, which had been recorded since 2011. His remix of "Shockwave" by The Hacker is featured in the 2013 video gameGrand Theft Auto V, on the Soulwax FMradio station. In 2015, Gesaffelstein released the single "Conquistador" in collaboration with Jean-Michel Jarre and also produced the soundtrack for the 2015 film Maryland. In early 2018, he produced the tracks "I Was Never There" and "Hurt You" from The Weeknd's My Dear Melancholy, EP. Gesaffelstein signed to Columbia Records in November 2018, with whom he released the lead single "Reset" from his second studio albumHyperion in the same month. In January 2019, he released a collaboration with The Weeknd titled "Lost in the Fire" as the second single from Hyperion, and later in March 2019 released another collaboration with Pharrell Williams titled "Blast Off". His second studio album was then released on 8 March 2019. On 3 October 2019, Gesaffelstein announced his surprise EP Novo Sonic System, consisting of 6 tracks, which was released the following day.
Musical style
Mixmag describes Gesaffelstein's style as being a "dark and threatening techno, though enchanting"; The Inrocks see it as "black, ultra-violent music, revives the techno fundamentals, the intransigence of Underground Resistance, the mental and obsessive structures of Drexciya, the contemporary power and more". Megan Buerger from the Washington Post describes his style has a mixture of dark and underground music, and notes that a specialty of the artist is his use of silences to create a "tension" before a "raucous explosion of bass and percussion". Rolling Stone magazine sees his music as being "a little more aggressive and punk-rock than normal".
