Universalists by Yonatan Gat.
Bandcamp Link: Universalists
When this album started, I wasn’t sure if I had put on the right thing!
It first reminded me of something Socalled might put together with samples and live music.
It seems like what they’ve done on this album is to take elements and samples from different sorts of folk music, from Klezmer to the indigenous people of North America, and used it to inform the tracks.
Listening more, it really reminded me of what the band Can was doing with their Ethnological Forgery Series. Well, if Can was a 21st Century eclectic surf guitar band. In any case, many of the collage elements do remind me of the sort of high jinks Holger Czukay got up to on his 1990s albums like Der Often ist Rot and Rome Remains Rome.
In fact, they find some of the very specific guitar sounds and techniques that Michael Karoli used on those albums for a couple of the shorter, more collage-ey tracks.
I don’t know if this is an intentional tribute to Czukay and Can or if it is a sort of convergent evolution.
In any case, a great new album from a great band.
#YonatanGat #Universalists #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack
