Stranger Cat

BIOGRAPHY

Stranger Cat is vocalist, producer, composer, DJ, light artist, video maker dancer, and sound healer Cat Martino. Live she masterfully creates live loops using voice, synth and beats, fusing organic and electronic songwriting. Her self-made light sculptures merge music, art and technology, igniting a full sensory experience. Having collaborated with such indie music luminaries as Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten, Son Lux, Lucius, and The Shins (on Saturday Night Live) to name a few, Stranger Cat delivers a range of intricate and soulful art pop. 

She was awarded New York Foundations of the Arts (NYFA) Women's Grant (2020) & NYFA/NYC City Corps Grant (2021) as merit to her original music. Stranger Cat performed at iii Points X music festival, Miami (2023), and has performed her unique style of contemporary art pop inside her self-programmed light sculpture installations at Art Basel Miami events 2021-2023. Her voice and songwriting at the center, she is surrounded by keyboards, looping pedals, samples from nature and city sounds, a multi-media show including her crystalline light sculptures made from sustainable, found materials and nature dance videos, using her art as statement to protect and preserve the environment.

Of her forth-coming album 'Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body In Pieces', Cat says: "I wanted to give myself and the listener permission to feel everything, then dance and let it all go. I was feeling: Show your pain but make it move. Make it Art.” For context, Cat survived a life threatening accident in 2018 where she was immobilized casted in a wheelchair for 5 months, with Doctors predicting she'd not dance again (she did), and live in pain (she does not, though manages occasional flare ups). “If anything this has shown me I am a musician and artist for life, and given me more passion for creating. Life is too short not do what you were born for". 

Stranger Cat's 'In the Wilderness' was released on Joyful Noise Records, and NPR cites her work "Pairs high-energy production with soaring vocals that sound like a dare to be free", while Noisey/Vice says she "Hangs in a starry galaxy alongside Kate Bush and Purity Ring". Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Pitchfork, LA Times, Boston Herald, and more. She has toured internationally from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House, Coachella to Primavera Festival.

Stranger Cat creates sound and light installations that transport one out of the ordinary world into daydream, breath and imagination. She also offers Sonic Sound Baths, using live looped vocals, her original beats, singing bowls and other organic instruments, synths and more. She enjoys sharing the power of healing through sound and movement, integrated with the chromo therapy visuals of her light sculptures and video.  As a 1st generation Sicilian with an immigrant Father who was the 1st to go to college and become a Principal, part of her practice serves to educate in music tech, and provide access inclusive to all despite gender, race, age or class.


 

 

Press Photos

Sample Track

SIRENS as premiered on NPR

as premiered on Pitchfork

Inquiries