‘all man panel’ opens with a solitary guitar that initially sounds Spanish before the rest of the band come in and things take on a Persian flavour. The incredible sound is in part thanks to Empress Piru having two bassists, and puts in mind the likes of Kourosh Yaghmaei, Faramarz Aslani and Omar Khorshid; a vibe of the latter in particular permeating the album despite each track having a distinct character. The picture painted is one of night, heat and sand; real fires for light and the shadows they cast dancing large across the side of tents a cat moves stealthily next to.

‘betron’ kicks in with a hint of Batman theme and plenty of chic vibe; the laidback pace the song falls into a literal example of cool. There’s an incredible space in the sound without anything being loose. It conjures visions of slow sweeping moves across the floor of a smoke-filled basement bar, looks of longing and lust met by eyes full of brooding reproach; the scene seen from the pov of a cat looking from a street-level window, attracted by some scent of other escaping the iniquitous den. 

Title track ‘normalise yourself’ takes things to a Blade Runner street racer cyberpunk scenario; Akira style bikes whizzing through city streets leaving straight lines of red taillight in their wake. It perfectly captures riding at night, the lights, reflections and motions; and even finds a lull in the traffic flow for the cat to cross the road at the 01:33 mark.  

‘wannabe’ put me in mind of something I couldn’t recall beyond it being a goth track from the 80s; it drove me a bit mad trying to work it out, until I finally caved and started trawling through the music collection certain I’d know it when seeing. But the resemblance to ‘Bon Bon Babies’ by the March Violets, an 80s post-punk/goth band from Leeds, UK, doesn’t last long as on the 50 sec mark the track shifts not so much up a gear but into a different space. The dark moody low end combines exquisitely with a higher end vocal to move the song into Gary Numan/Tubeway Army territory, just with the urgent Empress Piru Akira-conjuring prowling-cat cyberpunk edge.

‘no border’ swings fully into 80s gothic realms of the dry-ice-dance-floor-filling kind until it overflows in torment against the notion of borders and restricted movement; a lyrically pensive track in which respect it conversely blows all the smoke and pretensions away.

The Blade Runner vibe is back on ‘panik’ and with it a hint of the Terminator score. There’s something elusive in the sound; the stalking cat in a room full of mirrors, its prey no idea which one is for real. There’s hints of some of The Human League’s finer moments too, but this album isn’t a throwback to a bygone era; instead it’s what the era was always destined to be, how people dreamed of it sounding in the future through films set there; like somehow that meant it couldn’t be done quite this way ‘for real’ at the time.

‘schweiz halts maul’ opens with compelling solitary bass guitar as track one before slipping into a surf fuzz reminiscent of Link Wray’s attitude and style: slick, mean and uncompromising. A sense of ‘Rumble’ that again conjures images of cats up to no good, before reverting back to the Persian punk vibe, the vocals rising up above from the back of the sound—which is where that elusiveness comes from—defiant, triumphant, unrepentant, the cat that won’t be taught.

‘catwoman’ finishes the album on an even higher feline note with a mewing tune, while vocals hit a glorious finesse. Again the track moves into Persian territory, the drums dub-esque in places as the contrasts that find cohesion in the sound of Empress Piru are pretty much all showcased.

For the most part the music is a cat sitting in the shadows of a fire patiently waiting for the right moment to dive in and snatch a scrap before scarpering off; or slickly moving through an urban jungle in search of such a place as rain hammers down and bounces on pavements reflecting bright lights dully as the cat somehow manages to never get wet. While the vocals represent the cat that uses its claws to stop a hand holding a food-laden fork reaching the intended mouth before taking a bite of its own, the cat that knows no bounds and struts with determination, tail in the air, absolutely in no doubt about its higher purpose.

Everything about Empress Piru combined is—to use a phrase not so much in vogue these days but imo always should be—the cat’s whiskers.

Empress Piru:

• körgli / vocals: janine
• bass: sati
• bass: isa
• drums: mel
• guitar: martine

normalise yourself saw release June, 2019.

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