Perfume perform a 4 song set at TV Asahi's Dream Festival

Perfume performed at the TV Dream Festival, where they did a little 4 song set which consisted of the album mix of "Laser Beam", the original mix of "Polygon Wave", "Party Maker" and "Flash". I don't need to say which mix of "Flash" was performed, because we already know. Perfume do not acknowledge that album mix.

This is such a random ass setlist, and I would really like for Perfume to hop on Insta live and explain it to me. "Polygon Wave" is their latest single. I get it. And "Flash" is just that song that Perfume are always going to put in setlists from now until the asteroid hits. But the album version of "Laser Beam" and "Party Maker"? A Dream Festival? I would capped the performance off with "Dream Fighter". And I woulda gone with "Spring of Life" over "Laser Beam". But that's just me. Perfume's putting together odd and sometimes questionable setlists has become as signature as their stage outfits by this point.

HENNYWAY.

Here's the performance. And Perfume's dresses here aren't complete write-offs for once. Although Nocchi's getup seems oddly fitted compared to a-chan's and Kashiyuka's. The Nocchi sabotage continues, but it will not prosper.

And brace yourselves. Because we get Inkigayo and Music Bank camera work here.

Outfits play such a big part in setting a tone for a song, and the performance of "Polygon Wave" and to an extent "Laser Beam" really showed why. "Polygon Wave" is a genuinely cool sounding song, with an equally cool routine, which was capped by Perfume's outfits also being a bit cool. But then when you have them perform "Polygon Wave" in their standard attire, it just doesn't work. It's like when Perfume performed "Take Me, Take Me" for the first time in YEARS wearing their standard super sentai looking-ass outfits. It just didn't work visually, even though the routine was exactly the same. The song was sexy, but the outfits were anything but.

And "Party Maker"!? Perfume need to retire it unless there's a setup that can do it justice. The original "Party Maker" performance from the LEVEL3 tour was so mind-blowingly spectacular, that I never expected Perfume to ever perform the song again unless it was with the same stage setup. But they've performed it many times since, with all manner of stage setups with elevated platforms and moving platforms, to capture some semblance of the original performance, but without as elaborate of a setup. Perfume's energy when performing "Party Maker" is always great. I was fortunate enough to see them during World Tour 3rd where they surprisingly performed "Party Maker", and the atmosphere was amazing. But so much of "Party Maker", for me at least, is tied to that initial LEVEL3 performance with that specific staging. So to just perform "Party Maker" on a big-ass stage, in some big-ass venue with 3 platforms and a screen behind them just didn't work for me here in a way it would have in a smaller more intimate venue. I get that Perfume here were kinda at the mercy of the event, and that they couldn't fuck with the staging too much; which is why they should have performed something else.

Still. It's great seeing Perfume perform to crowds again. Even if this crowd was far more static than they usually are at these types of gigs. Maybe they shoulda performed "Fake It". Although could you imagine performing a song like this and NOBODY in the crowd is moving? I'd just walk off the stage mid song