Perfume announce that their 7th studio album will release for the Summer

In news that will surprise not a single Perfume fan, a-chan, Kashiyuka and Nocchi will be releasing a follow up to their 2018 studio album Future Pop in time to have pussies popping for the Summer. It’s wild to think that Perfume’s last studio album was Future Pop and that it released 4 years ago.

Wow. Life sure was different back then.

At time of posting, there’s no specific release date, no album title, no nothing. But whilst we could have all guessed an album would be coming this year, we now have confirmation from Perfume themselves. I guess an album announcement now made sense in light of a new Perfume song being announced to feature on NHK’s show Minna no Uta when “Flow” was barely out the door. That was pretty much the smoke flare than an album was imminent.

It also makes their appearance at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona seem less random; as it will be in support of the album. And hopefully, as a result of this Perfume will have interviews lined up with some American, British and European outlets; giving their fans in the West some Perfume interviews to mull over. The ladies of Perfume seem to be pretty candid these days, so hopefully if this does happen (and they’re sat with good interviewers), we’ll get something good, and not the usual fluff.

Whilst Perfume didn’t get into the specifics of the album, they did speak a bit on some of the songs they’d recorded and how their process with Nakata Yasutaka seemed different this time around. Natalie.nu had done a great interview with Perfume back in September 2021 (thankfully translated by Perfume fan gyudon_nau), where they spoke in depth about why there ended up being three versions of “Polygon Wave”, and how they chose to just release and perform music as Nakata was making it, with no real intent as to what the songs would be used for, if at all.

Nocchi, a-chan & Kashiyuka | Perfume Instagram Live Part 2 (March 8, 2022)

It’s always funny listening to Perfume talk about their music, because you can tell they don’t fully fuck with it. But know they can’t say otherwise. This moment from their Instagram Live was a picture.

Nocchi has detached herself from not only the situation, but a-chan and Kashiyuka’s plane of existence. Nocchi is somewhere else living a whole fantasy and just living for the camera. That black grid space from the “Polygon Wave” video? Nocchi is there by herself. a-chan is trying her best to convince herself and the fans that she likes the music. Whilst Kashiyuka is like ‘Gurl, you know it’s trash.’ And a-chan’s dog continues to let a-chan know that she’d rather be with Kashiyuka. In any interview where that dog is present, she’s with Kashiyuka and rolling her eyes at a-chan every time she opens her mouth. Popo-chan is tired of her.

HENNYWAY.

The tracklisting for this upcoming album is going to be controversial if all of the songs from the Polygon Wave EP end up on it, which they most likely will do, with the exception of “System Reboot”. This would mean that we’ve already heard 7 of the songs off of the album, which will become 8 by the time we hear their song for Minna no Uta. And if Perfume are releasing the album in the Summer, then there will probably be another digital single just before the album drops, which could take us to 9. That would leave 3 to 4 unheard songs, one of which will be an album intro. Us J-pop fans know that this is how it goes in Japan when it comes to album releases. After all, we’ve been here with Perfume specifically with Cosmic Explorer, barely any of which was new.

Perfume not being selective enough with which of their singles and including so many B-sides following a period of not including them is what hurt LEVEL3 and really beat the shit out of Cosmic Explorer. I’m cool with “Android&” making the cut because it’s a really good song, and is more of what I want from Perfume than what they’ve given with the singles. But I can do without “∞ Loop”. And I wouldn’t be mad if “Saisei” and “Time Warp” got left off of the album neither. Nobody seemed to care for “Time Warp”. Not even Perfume. I’ve never seen them be done with a single so fast before.

I think it would be far cleaner and make more sense conceptually to label “Saisei” and “Time Warp” up as anniversary singles to signify a new start and phase of Perfume’s careers, which seemed to be the theme for them fresh off the back of P Cubed. And then have the 'era' start with “Polygon Wave”. But Perfume, Amuse and Universal won’t do this. “Saisei” and “Time Warp” will absolutely be on the album. Although Perfume have spoken twice of how quick and how fast Nakata was cranking out songs, and this started around December 2020. So we’ll see. But I’m fully expecting everything we’ve heard so far to end up on the album. But despite how lukewarm I’ve been on these Perfume singles, at least the album is already shaping up to be a better listen than Future Pop and Cosmic Explorer. But it’s Nakata. And lawd knows what the album cuts will sound like. So lemme just keep my expectations low.

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Perfume announce that their 7th studio album will release for the Summer

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