The roll-wrappers behind Origami quietly completed the relocation of their Minnetonka location into the Mozaic building next to Bar Louie this month. There’s no sushi shortage in Uptown, but a raw-fish veteran is moving there anyway. “But I’m happy that I have my feet on the ground here and still have my connection points and I get to come share what I do everywhere else here.” “Now that I’ve got a taste of doing what I love on this scale, I don’t think I would be OK with just settling in here,” he said. Communal pride aside, don’t expect the jet-setting DJ to drop anchor in Minneapolis anytime soon, either. Logistically, a full-on move to Europe would make sense, but Khutoretsky’s roots in the Midwest run deep and he says its soil helps his sound bloom. While his transatlantic, club-pumping profession sounds glamorous, back home he enjoys “just being Zak” - hanging out with his wife, driving a “beat-down truck” and tending to the north Minneapolis studio spaces he owns. “In the end, it was the greatest thing that could’ve happened to me,” he said. Freed from the responsibility of running a club and sound for other people’s parties, he finally had time to focus on his music. He sold his hallmark sound system to raise money. Khutoretsky co-owned the downtown Minneapolis club Foundation, but it folded in 2008, leaving him with a pile of debt. So, they come out at 12, they spend an hour drinking and trying to find who they’re going to take home, and then they’ve maybe got 45 minutes to intently listen to the music, at tops.”
“At a club, it’s like peak, peak, peak and more peak, and then it’s over,” he says. Khutoretsky laments America’s (and more specifically Minnesota’s) early-closing club culture, arguing it cultivates DJs who play mostly massive, flashy tracks with little mood differentiation. His club dates here are infrequent, as the minimal maestro typically plays underground all-night parties for a devout, in-the-know audience. They may love him in Europe, but Khutoretsky, 36, is less well known at home. A year and a half ago he snagged an apartment in Berlin to cut down on hotel hunting and hitting up friends for couch space. Khutoretsky, who was born in Russia and grew up in Hopkins, splits his time between Minneapolis and Berlin. You’re not even conscious of it, but you’re guiding it.”
“You’re watching the lights, the atmosphere, the surroundings. “You’re connected with these people,” he said. While admitting those marathons can be physically challenging, Khutoretsky says eventually he stops thinking and his DJ chops take over.
His most infamous gigs have been grueling eight- to 12-hour sets at Berlin’s fabled Berghain club, where he says he’s an unofficial resident. “But you get there, especially when it’s a good gig, you get up and you start to play and you forget about all the bad.”Īfter cracking respected online electronic-music magazine Resident Advisor’s top DJs of 2011 list (the underground answer to DJ Mag’s more mainstream ranking), Khutoretsky leaped 40 spots in last year’s fan poll, to No. “The flying, the traveling, all that is definitely starting to wear down,” the turntable talent said. He says he’s booked through November, and 90 percent of his gigs are overseas. Deals with subterranean German sensation Ben Klock and Detroit legend Derrick May, each of whom released his music on their respective labels, helped earn the Minnesota mix maven international attention and steady club gigs across Europe. But over the past three-plus years, the real life Zak Khutoretsky has gone global. Since the mid-’90s, DVS1 has been a bastion of Twin Cities techno, testing the limits of local sound systems with brooding bass lines and soul-quaking galumphs. But the dance-floor faithful here in flyover land long have known something their across-the-pond peers are just discovering: DVS1 is one heckuva DJ. Minneapolis might not be a dance-music mecca like London or Berlin.
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