Ekaterina ( from Russia ) and Marco ( from Italy ) make up KARITI. They are married. You see, already, this is an interesting story. Ekaterina writes poetry – she sees words as colours. She plays the piano and guitar, and sings. Marco provides a sonic accompaniment, like a tapestry, with an array of guitar effects, reverbs and delays. Together they make music that you could describe as tense, brittle and anguished, but one can still feel at ease listening to their work. At least, if you’re here, you’re probably the kind of person who enjoys that darkness. They’ve been working hard these last couple of years, with two releases and quite a few gigs. I met them both briefly in ( the nice part of ) Birmingham in 2025 after their Centrala show ( Black Sabbath bridge, the day after ). Today, we have a catch up with Ekaterina about recording STILL LIFE, and what she plans for 2026 and beyond.
Well Ekaterina, it is snowing here in Birmingham, so I finally have some time to write to you. How is life for you right now? Are the cats OK?
ohh, i wish it snowed here, i miss the snow so badly, please enjoy its magic! cats are good, thank you for asking, i am home quite a bit lately, i think they enjoy having a butler available at all times
Last time we spoke, you said you were going ‘to slow down, to literally play slower, i often speed up while playing guitar. only after finishing the recording, i realized that some of the songs should’ve been slower. also, to get back to playing piano sooner (i’ve waited about 18 years to touch the keys again).’ So….you definitely got back to playing the piano again, but have you slowed down? Did everything go as you expected, writing and recording Still Life?
haha, thank you for reminding me about that, actually i did! albeit not always fully or, at times, it’s even too slow now, so still looking for that sweet spot. yes, piano was a big part of Dheghom and Still Life, and i am super grateful to have made peace with that instrument, now i am entering the more electronic realm exploring synths and other machines and tools to produce sound, we’ll see where it takes me
In the title track, those piano dyads are very Arvo Pärt. His music has been described as post-soviet, and ‘exiled’. He knew how to leave lots of space in his music. Any connection? Shoot me down if I’m wrong…
oh wow, that’s a great compliment, Arvo Pärt is such a gift to the humanity, i didn’t think about it, but now that you told me i can hear it, the hostility, the loneliness, i guess my upbringing in the post-soviet Russia left an impact. minimalism and leaving space is something i have always been drawn to, in music and in life in general (the latter intensifies as i age) being able to breathe is underrated
I’m impressed by your vocal melodies on Still Life – do you work them out before recording, or improvise?
thank you so much, you are very kind, almost always i have the basic skeletal structure of the song ready before going to the studio, usually it’s either a guitar or a piano melody and the vocal line, and then we dress it up in flesh and sometimes it mutates quite a bit, it can be improv (mostly) or a deliberate search for something specific, often the smallest of details, for instance all the final part of Still Life (the song) was improvised completely, i had the song ready by two thirds and the final chaos was born in the studio, not without the inspiration and the push outside my comfort zone by Lorenzo (the recording engineer and co-producer) and the creative use of some of the instuments i found laying around. Marco improvised almost all of his parts on this record, first take, instant click
You’ve got some promotion now – does that mean more gigs and more travelling for you? Maybe the US? You’ve done quite a lot of shows – do you feel you’ve found a home for Kariti, a scene where your band can really grow?
that’s a good question, after these 5 years of releasing music and 3 years of playing it live i feel like kariti is an ever-changing entity and her nature cannot and should not be contained because i have a feeling that she’s in the exploitative and even somewhat experimental mood right now, that being said, i love working with my label – Lay Bare Recordings – birthed and run by an incredible inspirational human Dèsirèe, and i loved working with Liz at Earsplit for the Still Life promo campaign. i still book shows on my own (not my favourite part, but as a small artist often there’s no other way), but i hope to soon find someone i can confortably work with for that part. as for the scene, i have always felt very loved and welcome by the extreme music community, be it sharing the stage and touring with heavier bands or ontributing my vocals, but i don’t think it’s a definitive home for kariti (albeit a lovely harbour i feel home), she’s a nomad, exploring, restless and i love it, i have no precise idea where we’re going next, although a concept is being shaped right now due to an amazing synchronicity. as for the US, i have been invited to play there, but i hold the Russian passport and, aside from the difficulty of even getting a US musician visa, if i get stopped at the border for some reason they might deport me to Russia, instead of Italy, which is actually my home and that would be a very unwanted turn of events for me at the moment, so i am not taking chances until the situation in changes.
The faraway reverb guitar always sounds so classy. No way you can get that sound with a cheap Behringer! How many pedals does Marco have now, and what are his favourites?
i will leave this question to Marco as soon as he’s done petting Lilith, it’s pretty cold here and cats are particularly clingy these days (luckily for us), just want to add that i love all the different sounds he creates playing with me!
Marco: Hi Scott, and thank you! Now I have seven pedals on my board and two of them are reverb pedals, that I use stacked and cascading, one is Death by Audio Reverberation Machine, which is always on reverb, which adds a lot of volume and character to my sound. The other one is Earthquaker Devices’ Transmisser, which is a super eerie reverb with a lot of shoegazy sound options (I don’t know why they discontinued it, as it has a very unique sound). I also have an Earthquaker Devices Night Wire, which is a super coool tremolo with one of the best filters and clean boost I’ve ever tried, so I use it as a filter to shape the sound also when I don’t use it as a tremolo. These are my favourite pedals on my board as I can make many dramatically different sounds, just playing around with their features and parameters. I love to use pedals with some crazy features for my guitar work with kariti, as they take me to some unpredictable territories and allow me to fine sculpt my sound.
Thanks Marco! Ekaterina, you sing in Russian on the last three tracks. Does that make it easier to write lyrics, for you? Do you generally think with an inner voice, and is that voice Russian? I am in awe of multi-lingual people. ( Being English, no matter how hard you try, most places you go to, people just want to speak in English ( in American accents ). I’m just apologising on behalf of our country. ).
haha, i love English and grew to appreciate the different dialects when touring the UK, but when i speak or think, switching between English, Russian and Italian makes no difference for me, i have colour-grapheme synaesthesia which is maintained when i switch between the languages, it probably helps, but sometimes i cannot make out a word in any of them haha, i just get confused and forget, or make up words, fun times when i need to explain something complex. i am learning Greek now, that’s a whole different Universe of a language, i am excited to see if it has any impact on kariti, for instance Italian or Spanish or German never did, i’ve only written lyrics in Russian or English so far. and to respond to your question, no, it doesn’t make it easier, no difference, it’s just that sometimes a poem comes in Russian, sometimes in English, depending on maybe a book i am reading or which language i speak the most that day, it’s probably only English and Russian because these 2 languages have been with me as long as i can remember myself.
It would be great to hear you do an unplugged version of Purged with an acoustic guitar…any chance?
i cannot (and don’t want to!) say no to these requests, i am waiting for my custom acoustic guitar to be built within the next few weeks and this will be the first thing i will do with it, thank you for asking ♥
Did you both make any new year resolutions for 2026?
ha, i already replied a bit above (booking and such), other than that i am not a fan of resolutions (people, myself included, rarely keep them). i am spontaneous enough, sometimes destructively so, so i will just try to keep enjoying what i do and have as much as i can and give way to whatever comes. not sure about Marco, but i think it’s pretty much the same for him – one of the reasons we work so well together
Ekaterina, thanks for the chat. Last words to you…
thank you, Scott, i hope to be back to Birmingham, i discovered it to be a pretty unpopular opinion among most people i know, within the UK and outside of it, but i LOVED your city, i want to come back and explore a lot more, hopefully soon, maybe even when it snows..
faustian nosebleed 
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