You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
YONATAN GAT<br />
no rules and a new language, as worlds collide and cross-pollinate<br />
BY CHRISTINE LEONARD<br />
From shutting down nightclubs in Tel Aviv<br />
with his confrontational Israeli punk band<br />
Monotonix to conducting crowds through<br />
sacred ceremonies in repertoire theatres, experimental<br />
guitarist and composer Yonatan Gat has<br />
put a lot of miles on his Guild S-200 Thunderbird.<br />
After five years and a stunning 1,000 live performances<br />
with his off-the-hook punk group, Gat has<br />
honed his musical skills and had the opportunity<br />
to practice his trade alongside a wide range of<br />
talented individuals. Somewhere along the way<br />
he became a collector of sounds, a passion that<br />
would serve the New York-based virtuoso well as<br />
he entered the second phase of his career.<br />
“I think the main thing I learned from touring<br />
with a band like Monotonix, which was a combination<br />
of a rock ’n’ roll band and extreme theatre,<br />
is that the less you try to control everything and<br />
the more you open yourself up to the moment<br />
around you, the more interesting everything<br />
around you becomes,” explains Gat. “Life is crazy<br />
and unpredictable and can’t be analyzed, it just<br />
happens!”<br />
That willingness to embrace spontaneity<br />
combined with Gat’s broadening knowledge<br />
of recording techniques and ethnomusicology,<br />
generated a solo EP, Iberian Passage, in early 2014.<br />
And, by the following year the ambitious multi-instrumentalist<br />
was ready to reveal his full-length<br />
debut, Director.<br />
“When I’m deep into working on an album it<br />
consumes everything and every element of my<br />
work goes into it,” he explains.<br />
Recognized for his genre-challenging guitar<br />
rock improvisation, Gat isn’t content to simply<br />
draw on outside influences when composing his<br />
albums. He routinely invites players from around<br />
the world to bring their craft into his recording<br />
studios to add their own traditional methods to<br />
his modern curations.<br />
“Right now, I’m editing an interpretation of<br />
Antonin Dvorak’s American String Quartet with<br />
Greg (Saunier) from Deerhoof on drums, Mikey<br />
(Coltun) from Mdou Moctar’s band on bass and<br />
an organ player called Curt Sydnor. I play guitar<br />
and it’s a very live and raw arrangement of a 19th<br />
century string quartet.”<br />
This openminded approach to incorporating elements<br />
of regional music into his own nibble rock<br />
guitar overtures has made him a much-sought-after<br />
songwriting partner, especially amongst those<br />
looking to expand the borders of their art.<br />
“Other projects I got to be a part of included<br />
traveling to Brazil and working on some recordings<br />
with members of a tribe called Wapichana.<br />
They are from the Amazonian region of Roraima,<br />
at the north of the country right by the Venezuelan<br />
border. They create very holy music, full of<br />
repetition and a lot of imagination. Chris Pravdica,<br />
who played in Swans, is playing bass on the recordings,<br />
and Paul from Thee Oh Sees was playing<br />
drums with us in the studio because we were<br />
touring together and he was available that day.<br />
He is a great improviser and did an amazing job.<br />
I’m also working on more film and music projects<br />
with the Eastern Medicine Singers and planning<br />
some recording sessions with my touring band<br />
that includes musicians like Max Almario and<br />
Thor Harris, we’re working on blocks of physical<br />
sound that will be edited into songs.”<br />
Gat’s vision of music as the universal language<br />
is perhaps best exemplified by his latest release,<br />
Universalists, which appeared in May of 2018.<br />
The culmination of a nomadic lifestyle, rigorous<br />
cultural cross-pollination and editing more than<br />
100 hours of recording sessions, Universalists pulls<br />
together the harmonic threads that run through<br />
the heart of the Renaissance-man’s transnational<br />
switchboard of ideas and perspectives.<br />
“In the last album, a lot of the work focused<br />
on fitting ideas from different worlds under the<br />
same umbrella by using sound manipulation and<br />
editing,” the maestro elaborates. “Good memories<br />
from a tremulous 2018 were touring with<br />
an eight-piece band that included the Native<br />
American group Eastern Medicine Singers. They<br />
are incredible drummers and singers and working<br />
with them really changed the foundations of<br />
how I look at music. Our collaboration is a rare<br />
project that touches listeners on a deep level, and<br />
it was an honour to watch it manifest on stages in<br />
different continents on an epic scale, despite the<br />
political climate.”<br />
Honouring tradition while side-stepping conformity,<br />
the success of Gat’s celebratory sonic smashups<br />
proves that when it comes to musical innovation<br />
nothing is outside of the realm of possibility.<br />
“In music there are no rules and data can teach<br />
us nothing. It’s really something else. That’s why<br />
people gravitate to it, when there is no logic what<br />
we have left is music.”<br />
Yonatan Gat headlines Jan. 23 at Winterruption<br />
Festival (Saskatoon), Jan. 25 and 26 at BIG Winter<br />
Classic (Calgary) and Feb. 1 at Lee’s Palace<br />
(Toronto).<br />
ROCKPILE <strong>BEATROUTE</strong> • <strong>JANUARY</strong> <strong>2019</strong> | 23