Born in Ukraine and raised in Chicago, Yuri Kay's story finds its center in the city's early-2000s dance music underground, where the genre was unavoidable for any curious kid. The gateway wasn't house — it was The Prodigy — but the city did the rest. Raves and warehouse shows pulled him into the deeper currents: house, trance, hardstyle, progressive. He begged his mother for turntables. Eventually a pair of Technics arrived, and the journey began.

He played his first show at seventeen and worked the all-ages circuit until he was old enough to walk into the rooms he'd been studying. In his early twenties, that meant some of Chicago's most defining clubs — Vision, Castle, Medusa's, Soundbar, Mid — most now renamed or shuttered, save for Soundbar, where the legacy continues. International dates followed, including shows in Europe.

Production came alongside the DJing. A run of releases on labels including Sudden Life Recordings and Terminal 01 Recordings drew support from Russian trance figurehead DJ Feel before life intervened and the studio went quiet.

That hiatus is over. Re-energized in the studio and back on the booking calendar, Yuri Kay's return debut single Sabroso arrives May 15 on Spotify and all major streaming platforms — the opening track of a new chapter, drawing on the same long-arc instincts that shaped his earliest sets: depth over flash, momentum over noise.

Also in production: a forthcoming track with fellow Chicago producer Alex Kosoglaz and the late Ron Carroll. Recorded in the studio with Carroll — the "Minister of Sound" and Chicago house pioneer — before his passing.

From booth to floor — recent sets across the Chicago club circuit.

Two decades of bookings across Chicago's defining clubs and beyond — from teenage all-ages sets through peak-time slots in his early twenties.

Yuri Kay performs USB DJ sets — flexible to most professional club setups. Standard requirements below; substitutions discussed case-by-case.