The star, real name Philippe Zdar, is one-half of the influential French house duo Cassius who have worked with Kanye West, Beastie Boys, Phoenix, Franz Ferdinand, MC Solaar and Pharrell.
The 52-year-old's manager Sebastien Farran said: "He made an accidental fall, through the window of a high floor of a Parisian building."
Zdar, whose real name is Philippe Cerboneschi, was one half of Cassius, along with Hubert Blanc-Francard (who is known in the group as Boom Bass).
Cassius were due to release a new album Dreems tomorrow on Friday, June 21.
Online tributes have come from all corners of the music world.
Career
Zdar and Boom Bass started working together in 1988, producing albums for the French hip-hop artist MC Solaar. In 1991, they created their first project, called La Funk Mob, and the following year, they started to increasingly experiment with electronic sounds. Zdar's experience with electronic music was influential in his involvement with Étienne de Crécy in the project Motorbass, who released a sole full-length album, Pansoul.
In 1996, Zdar and Boom Bass then created "Foxxy", their first self-released house music track, under the name Cassius, and the moderate success that followed lead to them remixing tracks for acts such as Air. In January 1999, they released their first single to become a mainstream hit, "Cassius 1999". It was published by Virgin Records, and entered the UK Singles Chart at #7. This was soon followed by their debut album, 1999, which had two more singles released from it, "Feeling For You" and "La Mouche". The music videos for "Cassius 1999" and "Feeling for You" portrayed the character Deadman, from DC Comics, as a DJ superhero.
2002 saw their second album release, Au Rêve. This featured the "empowered female disco" track "I'm a Woman", with Jocelyn Brown on vocals, as well as the hit single "The Sound of Violence", featuring Steve Edwards on vocals. This album also had collaborations with Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah and Leroy Burgess.
Cassius returned to the studio in 2006, for the more experimental single "Toop Toop", but the next album, titled 15 Again, featured more vocal collaborations than the duo had done with Au Rêve.
While rehearsing their 15 Again album tour, Cassius provided the community with the a cappella track of their single "Toop Toop" and encouraged fans and friends to start remixing the song. It became an immediate success: the band started the Cassius Workshop project and released more a cappellas for remixing purposes. They claim to have received more than 400 remixes.
Cassius's song "I Love You So" was sampled on the track "Why I Love You" on Jay-Z and Kanye West's 2011 collaboration album Watch the Throne.
