Blessed with one of the best voices in dark electronic pop, Mari Kattman has been writing, recording, producing and performing music since 2012.
Collaborating with SURVEILLANCE, IVARDENSPHERE, BLACKCARBURNING, PSY’AVIAH, CASSETTER and SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS, her roles as a guest vocalist have occasionally overshadowed her work as a solo artist. But things changed in 2018 with HELIX, her musical partnership with her husband Tom Shear of ASSEMBLAGE 23.
Applying the methods learnt from HELIX, she began taking control of her own destiny and self-produced her third album ‘Year Of The Katt’. Moving away from the trip-hop and trap that characterised her first two long players ‘Hover’ and ‘Stay’, the end result is her best solo effort yet with a fine collection of catchy electronic songs with crossover potential for the dancefloor and pumping industrial pop.
In the ‘Year Of The Katt’, Mari Kattman has become the alluring gothic club queen offering strong messages of female empowerment. While on her recent UK tour with ASSEMBLAGE 23, Mari Kattman chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK in London to celebrate ‘The Year Of The Katt’…
You declared it the ‘Year Of The Katt’, so how has it been for you?
I DID! It’s been AWESOME! Last year I knew it would be coming out this year and it was a Herculian effort to write this album. It took me about a year and a half of blood, sweat and tears, a lot of learning curves, a lot of upping my abilities as a producer and as a composer… I thought this is it, I finally broke through and I did something all on my own, it’s kind of something I’d always dreamed that I could do, so I HAD to call it my year! *laughs*
You opted to self-produce the album, how was the realisation process for you?
You have to be a person of many minds if you’re going to be doing everything by yourself, because you have to think of everything. From the creative inventive stage of mind and then into more of a technical hat where you are thinking how things sound in a stereo field and in dynamics, you have to think how am I going to use post-production techniques to make some of these pieces shine, which parts are going to be more to the back of the song etc. There’s a lot that goes into that… when you’re doing it alone, you kind of talk to yourself because it’s so thought intensive! *laughs*
It all wrapped up very nicely where some of those places I had never been before, compiling a 10 song situation, making sure that the production is consistent and everything flows from track to track, I started almost in the process to forget titles and things, there were so many things at once, it was an experience! *laughs*
Was HELIX an important bridge into self-production and how you approached ‘Year Of The Katt’?
I think so… my bridge into self-production was just being around Tom to be honest. During the pandemic in 2020, Tom was working on some other stuff and I was kind of just waiting maybe for him to give me something or just working on collaborations with others. So I was like “I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands so I’m going to start learning a DAW and production”; I watched Tom do it and he was making these things happen so I thought if Tom can do it, I could probably do it too. It was always something I was really afraid to step into. But then, just knowing Tom, seeing how the sausage was made, I realised it didn’t look all that complex or what I thought…
Do you wish you had self-produced your music earlier?
Oh 100%, I tell people this all the time. It’s really not as hard as you think and it’s really rewarding to have your own creative message coming through that’s just you. I feel like when you collaborate with others on music, you’re getting a bit of energy from everybody and it’s nothing like listening to an album that came from one person, that’s YOU in music form and that’s fascinating.
There was less of the trip-hop and trap this time around than your previous albums and more uptempo material that could be played in an alternative dance club? What prompted the change in style for you?
I love trip-hop and was working with other people at that time so it was heavily influenced by those musicians as well. But I do live in that world of trip-hop and listening to those underground bands; I like BOARDS OF CANADA, stuff like that but I also heard this Bass movement that came forward because if you listen to a lot of those sounds on my album, you will hear there is still that, not necessarily trap element, but I try to stay midtempo because I can play with hi-hats, I can change the percussion to make it interesting, that part was really important to me. I love that creativity in the groove, like when you have a bass groove and can it up or make your hi-hats fun or do a drum beat that’s not necessarily like 4/4.
So when I made this album, I was really interested in first of all, making it pretty minimal so that I wasn’t overwhelmed as a new producer and two, those strong basslines that grab you right from the beginning. It’s so amazing when someone can pull off a really catchy bassline and it’s like the best thing you’ve ever heard, you could listen to it for minutes on end and you won’t be sick of it! I wanted to do that and this is my interpretation of that vision.
Have you ever been a ‘Typical Girl’?
Hahaha! ‘Typical Girl’ is really about that sort of put down people use on women like “oh she’s just being a typical girl, she’s just got her period” etc… a lot of times, there is branding you get as a women where you’re not seen as an individual, but you’re given this idea that “oh she’s a crazy bitch” or whatever and I frickin’ hate that! People apply those gender stereotypes to women and it kills me. So I guess throughout the years of my life, hearing like there’s a break up and it’s “typical girl” and there’s no backstory to it! I wanted a song for that feeling and most women can relate to just being tossed away like a throw off stereotype!
‘Sharp Shooter’ works on several levels but what is your message?
It’s actually very deep, the song is about how we are living life as an experience as a soul, we reincarnate into these bodies. We experience things that are never mistakes, everything we experience in this lifetime is pointed to help is grow into better people. Even if it’s something very difficult for us, I do believe that our souls are chosen to go through types of situations in order to evolve and become our best selves and to figure out who we are as people. I feel that the message of life is to figure out who you are as an individual and to live that individual as loud as you can!
‘Sharp Shooter’ basically means that you are never going to miss what isn’t for you, because it’s always going to hit on target every time…
…but continuing the gun theme, ‘Little Bullet Girl’ has this eerie Eastern feel, what is the title referring to?
I wrote that one for my daughter, I see her growing up in this world that’s very difficult… kids are the ones set to carry this world forward and the message to my daughter is they prefer when they can control you. So I wanted her to know to maintain her independence and not lose herself in the general narrative of the world, to maintain that simple truth of herself. That also stretches to adults as well, so I feel a lot of people might be able to resonant with that, especially the chorus.
‘Pain’ is quite punchy yet thankful, was writing and recording that a cathartic experience?
Definitely! I feel like pain can’t hurt us if we understand that pain has purpose. Pain drives us away from the things that aren’t for us, whether or not it hurts us at the time, there’s often other pathways that open up outside of these painful experiences that leads us to the places that our souls are meant to be, to be with people who we are meant to be with.
A lot of times, we see pain and we say “Ow! This really hurts” but it’s a gift, it’s saying “this is not your truth, this is not who you are”, this pain is reflecting back to you what you aren’t! And once you’ve turned your focus from what you aren’t, you can find the reflection that matches who you are. A lot of people see the painful things that happen to them as negative and I just want there to be a narrative change to how we view painful experiences in our life and use them to reveal more of who we are as people.
Do you have a favourite track on ‘Year Of The Katt’?
My favourite track is ‘Take Myself Back’ and the reason for that is because the process of becoming the artist I am today involved a lot of me taking down a lot of the barriers and conflicting feelings I had about myself and what I could accomplish. Sometimes as we grow in life, people tell us things that you’re either this way or that, and you question it but realise “I guess this is who I am”… as we grow into middle age, we realise things are no longer serving us. We have to figure out who we are and take that identity back to represent ourselves in the best way possible. This album is really in its truth form about taking myself back, representative of me and that I know who I am.
Are you finding with these empowering messages from your songs on ‘Year Of The Katt’ that your female following is increasing?
I do and that makes me so excited, I love seeing women come together and a lot of my early influences in music were the RIOT GRRRL movement like BIKINI KILL, PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, a lot of strong female artists from that generation. When I used to see those bands come out on stage, it wasn’t about how Instagram sexy you looked, it was raw skill, raw talent, raw voice… I feel women are seeing the true genuine representation that I try to come through with. I really just want to reach people, it has nothing to do with image or ego to me, this is wanting to share insights that might help other people or give them a hand. With women, there are stages of our life which almost repel each other, like we don’t support each other.
What I’m finding is most of my fans at the front of my shows are female and I want to show them not only am I a female musician that’s doing it alone, I’m also a mom and I’m also not a super young person. I want to break all those stereotypes that keep women from reaching further. I want them to see that I can do that and maybe, if they wanted to do that, they could too!
Has your live experience changed for you at all with this clubbier ‘Year Of The Katt’ material?
I think so… I always say this but I write for myself but I also write for my audience. When I was doing some EPs a few years back, I was really paying attention to metrics, I wanted to see what people were responding to. I also wanted to see what DJs were enjoying and I wanted to make something that the audience can not only relate with but also have fun with. I feel like this is really about the fans… it’s a little bit about me, but it’s really about giving people a good time and maybe a good message they can run with.
Having the more uptempo stuff is definitely like multi-purpose music because you can like DJ it or sit at home listening to it, so when you do the higher BPM, you have more multi-use! *laughs*
You did a cover of SOFT CELL’s ‘Monoculture’ with PSY’AVIAH back in 2022, are there any other songs you would like to try and reinterpret?
We played with artist called Vain at Sheffield Corporation and I kept going “Oh Mr Vain! I know what I want…” *laughs*
I love 90s electronic dance pop, Crystal Waters, Martha Wash, that kind of thing… I get a lot of feelings about that because it was my true childhood, songs that I listened to, those big beautiful female voices and doing a cover from that period would be cool.
I did ‘Breña’ for the ‘Sacred Geometry’ tribute album to A PERFECT CIRCLE, the TOOL offshoot… that was considered strange when I did it because it’s not electronic but there’s something so beautiful about that song, I love lots of different types of music.
For those who might be new to Mari Kattman, what 5 entry point tracks might you recommend they check out to get a picture of why they should investigate further?
I love ‘Swallow’, I think that’s a really great track and I love the message behind it, I really related with a lot of fans who got it right away. As I’m writing my next album now, I realise people are paying attention to what I’m saying because you don’t always really know if people get it.
I think ‘Take Myself Back’ is so important too.
I will add from HELIX and say ‘Unimaginable Place’, I just love that gorgeous chorus, it’s just so beautiful and blooms.
I love ‘Lie To Herself’, that’s another HELIX track and I felt that one came together so beautifully, I’m really proud of it.
I’ll also say ‘Anemia’, it’s a two-fold fun goth-like message… I’m an iron-deficient person and I was dealing with anemia for a little while so the misery of that condition inspired this song I wrote at the last minute for ‘Year Of The Katt’, the body of it came together in maybe a couple hours… I had another song to go on the album but this replaced it and became a single.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Mari Kattman
Special thanks to Gary Levermore at Red Sand PR
‘Year Of The Katt’ is released by via Metropolis Records, available from https://marikattman.bandcamp.com/album/year-of-the-katt
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Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
21st November 2025
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