YONATAN GAT
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BIO
Yonatan Gat is a guitarist, composer, experimental producer and performance artist based in New York. He was reviewed and featured prominently in the NY Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, NPR, New Yorker, NOWNESS, The Wire, SPIN, Uncut, VICE and more. In 2013, the Village Voice voted Gat the “Best Guitarist in New York”. His last album, Universalists, was a provocative genre defying opus creating what Magnet Magazine called a “vital new music form” and a signature sound on the nexus of punk rock, experimental music, improvisational jazz and world music.
The album charted #19 on Billboard's New Artists, gaining unanimous universal acclaim despite proving nearly impossible to categorize. It was chosen #6 Best Contemporary/Classical Album of 2018 by The Guardian and #9 Best “Global” World Album by The Wire while simultaneously being hailed as a “bold new idea on what to do with rock” by PopMatters. SPIN summed it up best by saying: “there’s no use trying to pin it down. It’s beyond lightning in a bottle; Gat has lightning wrapped around his little finger.”
Looking back on 15 years in the frontier of performance, Gat first came to the spotlight as founder of Monotonix, which SPIN famously called “the most exciting live band in rockʼnʼroll” with concerts that were controversial enough to make them an international cult phenomenon touring with the likes of Pavement, Faith No More and Silver Jews, and also get them banned from playing shows in their home country. Cult film director Harmony Korine once described Monotonix as a “concert unlike anything else. They had completely destroyed the barrier between the performance and the audience, it incorporated extreme theatre and spectacle with incredible energy and musicianship. Most of the people in this American audience were terrified in the best way possible.”
One of the few guitarists to surpass the achievements of the band that brought them into the spotlight, Gat expanded his cult following after releasing his debut LP on Joyful Noise in 2015, which saw him headlining tours in the US and Europe while touring with artists as diverse as Thee Oh Sees, Of Montreal and Sun Ra Arkestra.
2019’s Universalists tour, 4 years in the making, is a culmination of Gat’s experience as a performer – a combination of Monotonix’ ability to transform the concert environment with Yonatan Gat’s recent shamanic command of the stage as guitarist and frontman. The versatile performances have been known to include up to 9 musicians of different cultures led by Gat into a trance-inducing performance that feels as much like a ritual as it does a concert. Performances have included Peruvian ayahuasca shamans and native American drummers such as the mysterious Eastern Medicine Singers improvising alongside experimental rock’s most recognized names such as Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, Thor Harris of Swans and Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, hitting a new mark between concert, performance-art and musical ritual.
Hometown: New York, NY
Booking Contact: joey@spaceagencybooking.com