- There's not much you can do with boring sounds. But when you have great sounds, there's not all that much you have to do. DVS1, the nom de guerre of Minneapolis's Zak Khutoretsky, is living proof of this: his tracks (don't you dare call them tools) are positively devoid of fat, leaving nothing in the way of their perfectly sculpted, supremely muscular constituent parts. His debut 12-inch, for Ben Klock's Klockworks label back in 2009, was enough to catapult DVS1 into the realm of extended Berghain gigs and regular long-haul flights, and the few releases that have trickled out since continue to accentuate the sharpness of his teeth.
His latest lands on his own label HUSH, an outgrowth of his long-running promotion and soundsystem outfit, and those sounds continue to impress: rather than merely strip dance music down to its nuts and bolts, DVS1 taps techno's core and laps up its funky essence. Though not much more than a delay-heavy bassline and taut cymbal snaps, "Evolve" possesses surprising lushness and warmth, like the caress of a particularly well-adjusted cyborg. "Submerge" similarly approaches forceful sounds with a velvety touch, but this time, it sounds like we're hearing it through a soundsystem that's a few miles beneath the ocean's surface. Not much changes over the track's nearly eight-and-a-half minutes, but with sounds and arrangements as well considered as these, I'm not sure anyone will be itching to get out of the water.
Tracklist A Evolve
B Submerge