Perfume to release their single “Flow” on March 9

Amuse and Universal have shut my ass up, because they have gone ahead and announced the release of Perfume’s new single, which is the song “Flow”. A song so mid-tempo that I thought there’d be no way it’d release as a sole A-side.

1. Flow
2. Mawaru Kagami (Polygon Wave live version)
3. Flow (Instrumental)
4. Mawaru Kagami (Polygon Wave live version instrumental)

“Flow” features as the theme song for the TBS J-drama Fight Song, which surprised me with how slow it was, as mid-tempo isn't a gear that Perfume’s music switches into often. And when it does, we rarely get it as a sole A-side (i.e “Macaroni” being paired with “Baby Cruising Love”. “Spice” being paired with “Glitter”. “Star Train” was the only exception. So “Flow” getting a sole A-side release is a really nice surprise which is bucking Perfume’s release trends, as they had done in 2021 with the digital release then EP release of “Polygon Wave”.

“Flow” is flanked by a B-side, which is the previously unreleased song that the fandom had dubbed “Mirror Ball”, which Perfume first performed as their encore song for their Polygon Wave gig in 2021. Strangely (or not, because...Nakata) the title of the song is “Mawaru Kagami”, which translates quite literally to ‘Spinning Mirror’, which you could interpret as a disco ball or a mirror ball. But there is clearly a distinction to Nakata between the two, because Perfume sing the words ‘Mirror ball’ and ‘Mawaru kagami’ in the song.

The version of the “Mawaru Kagami” which features on this release is dubbed the ‘Polygon Wave Live version’, which means there’s a high likelihood that we’ll get another version of the song at some point down the line, as was the case with “Polygon Wave”. Perfume had mentioned in their interview with Natalie, that when they had chosen to perform the song, they had no idea what the ultimate fate of the song would be; if it would get released as a single, end up on an album, or just live on as that song they performed that one time. So I guess Nakata is leaving himself room to do something with the song.

Some may think ‘Maybe it’s just the live version from the show’. But y’all. C’mon. Perfume don't sing live. This version will be whatever version was playing off of Kashiyuka's iPhone on the aux cable for the gig. It'd make no sense to pull the audio from the concert and call it a ‘live version’, when it’s just the studio recorded version with crowd sounds and a bit of reverb. Especially when there's an instrumental included on the release too.

It would've been great had Perfume recorded “Star Train” in one of the styles that the song is covered in Fight Song and also included it as a B-side.

“Flow” will be getting itself a music video. But given the quality and the consistency of what we've gotten to date, the video will just be of Perfume performing a dance routine on the set and in the dresses shown on the cover (the image at the top of this post), and not much else. Or we’ll get some “Tokyo Girl” type mess, with a bunch of people doing shit which is pretty disconnected from the scenes of Perfume. And speaking of the cover, a-chan really can't settle on a ponytail, huh?

“Flow” will release physically and digitally on March 9th, 2022.

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