Yonatan Gat
Universalists

The story of man is the only true possible story because it is men who tell stories, and the stories they tell speak of men, and in any case, they are all parts of the same great story. This clearly unfolds along a single timeline, even somewhat from 1492 to today, where this line intersects at one point with another perpendicular line to form a plane: man realizes that the Earth is spherical and begins to move from one point to another on the planet. This also highlighted temporal discrepancies based on different situations related to climate and geographical configuration, which means that when Columbus arrived in the Americas, in some way, he was the first true time traveler.

Traveling through time was something concrete until the beginning of the 1900s (I suggest "El abrazo de la serpiente" by Ciro Guerra, 2015), then the time gap closed, even though there remain unresolved issues we know today, which constitutes a privilege for a few and requires great open-mindedness and shamanic powers performed according to rituals that go beyond the concept of time and space. Qualities that I recognize in Yonatan Gat, a musician with a punk-rock background (ex-Monotonix) based in NYC, USA, already known for his experimental and avant-garde orientation, devotion to free-jazz, improvisation, and psychedelic rock.

"Universalists" (Joyful Noise Recordings/Glitterbeat) is an album recorded practically across the United States of America with the collaboration of an incredible number of musicians and industry professionals. Among them: the musicologist Alan Lomax (the album opens with a choir recorded by Lomax in Genoa, Italy in 1950) and a big name like Steve Albini (who had already produced an EP for him), but it would be unjust not to consider all the others whose contribution is certainly no less significant: bassist Sergio Sayeg and producer John Schimpf, the incredible vocal interpretation of Catalina Mateu in "Post-World", the impressive percussion and choir section of the Eastern Medicine Singers ("Medicine"), avant-jazz saxophonist Matt Bauder who also plays clarinet here ("Cue The Machines", "Projections", "Chronology"), Thor Harris and Sarah Gautier of Thor & Friends...

Amidst clattering noise music and darker rock blues and ingenious guitar riffs worthy of Sir Richard Bishop, thus the characteristic Rangda boleros, the tropicalist-pop attitude of OS Mutantes, tribalism and Middle Eastern allegories, "Universalists" is an album that insinuates itself under the skin of the listener, wrapping around them until it squeezes them in a grip like the embrace of a gigantic serpent, a green anaconda from the Amazon Basin, the one Vicente Yanez Pinzon in 1500 named Rio Santa Maria de la Mar Dulce, the world's longest water arm that pushes its way into the belly of the earth.