Early life Kurvitz was born in Tallinn on 8 October 1984 to the artist couple
Raoul Kurvitz and Lilian Mosolainen. By the age of fifteen, Kurvitz had dropped out of school. He became part of a group of peers called The Overcoats, a group of "5-10 high school dropouts...anarchists of some sort, with the motto: 'Today we drink tea, tomorrow we rule the world.'" Long
pen-and-paper role-playing sessions with this group were the beginning of the world that would become
Disco Elysiums Elysium, and former Overcoats would form the core of the group that coalesced into the ZA/UM cultural association (not to be confused with ZA/UM Studio) in the early 2000s.
Music In 2001, Kurvitz became the lyricist and lead singer of
progressive rock band Ultramelanhool, which has seen by many as a continuation of the Estonian
alternative rock tradition developed by
Vennaskond and Metro Luminal. The literary scientist Jaak Tomberg argued, however, that such easy comparisons may do a disservice to the band's actual original character. To date, they have released two albums, (
Black Orange) and (
Material), in 2004 and 2008 respectively. The band failed to secure an Estonian record label for their second album. It was then self-released with money inherited by Kurvitz's long-time friend, editor, and collaborator Martin Luiga, and released on the internet for free. In 2011, Kurvitz collaborated on his father Raoul's album
Forbidden to Sing, providing backing vocals and keyboards.
Literature In 2013, Kurvitz published the novel
Sacred and Terrible Air (), on which he had worked over five years. The novel, set in the fictional world of Elysium, centers on three men who, twenty years after the unexplained disappearance of their classmates, are still determined to locate them. It received positive reviews, with literary theorist Johanna Ross highlighting it as one of the few books to successfully bridge science fiction and "literature proper". The literary scientist Jaak Tomberg emphasized the great attention to detail in his review: "Through that novel we bear witness to (1) a style which seems to be in its actually realistic and simply reflective way to be attentive towards the world to an almost paranoid degree, and (2) to a made-up world, which in its relentless interconnectedness is far more systemic than the reality we recognize as 'our own' and also remarkably more systemic than most of the fictional ones, which may by their similar way of building reservedly be called 'fantastic'." Despite its positive critical reception, the book was a commercial failure, selling between 1,000 and 1,500 copies, and causing Kurvitz to "succumb to a deep alcoholism". An English translation was planned for 2020, but it did not occur. As of 2023, two English fan translations exist. Having played
tabletop roleplaying games for much of his life, Kurvitz uses
worldbuilding techniques derived from
Dungeons & Dragons, though opting for a pseudo-modernist fantasy world instead of a pseudo-medieval one. He employs help in the development of his ideas. "Mass editing" was employed as a tool in the finishing stage of the book; people of varying backgrounds assessed the readability and realism of the work, pointing out confusing passages and suggesting amendments. having produced about half of the total in-game text (half a million words). Kurvitz claims to have developed the Elysium world since he was fifteen or sixteen, originally inspired by "a bootleg Finnish Middle Earth roleplay system". The game is also notable for having far less emphasis on violence than the norm for the RPG genre. Kurvitz considers some aspects of
Disco Elysium "essentially
Soviet", referencing the Soviet Union's
tradition of
science fiction literature and the works of the
Strugatsky brothers in particular. "They were people who took responsibility for the
heat death of the universe. When they were writing books, this needed to contribute to the ultimate fate of the universe. Because they didn't have money obligations, so what are your obligations then? So this kind of serious responsibility for, what the fuck does a piece of entertainment really do to the human mind, and what are the responsibilities therein, that I think is very, very, very prevalent in
Disco Elysium." "I guess my favourite thing I like to say about this is that for me it's just a wholesome tradition. It's about loyalty, it's about the country where I was born. This is how I was raised, this was who I was told to follow, and I would be a naughty revolutionary, kind of an edgy rebel, if I wouldn't have Lenin on my writing desk." Kurvitz is a follower of
Hegelian dialectics, which he describes as "the central principle of Elysium's worldbuilding." Dialectics and other leftist historical theories were essential for Elysium's development, forming the basis for critical elements of the world's history, such as the innocentic system. == Legal issues and controversies ==