Perfume reveal the tracklist of their album Plasma. And I hope y’all liked that Polygon Wave EP.

Perfume have released a new visual, which you can see right above here. I really hope this has nothing to do with the album cover, because there is no concept in this shit that links to the album title at all. It looks like a previously unused promo shot to promote their Tokyo 2020 Opening Ceremony performance. The one that didn’t happen. Or an unused promo shot for the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards. Or an unused promo shot for “Cling Cling”. Basically, nothing about this shot is fresh, hot, new or seems tied to the album title or concept we’ve gotten across some of the songs,

HENNYWAY.

The tea isn’t the visual. It’s that along with it came a fax of the tracklist for their 7th studio album Plasma.

For those of you who were hoping for album mixes, there are none, although we are getting an updated version of “Time Warp”. I don’t think this is going to be the version of “Time Warp” that Perfume had performed to on CDTV Live! Live! back in 2020. I think it’s going to be a re-work which feels better suited for a tour. So I expect we’ll get a different intro and outro, with some small changes in-between verses. I don’t think we’re going to get “Cling Cling (Cosmic Explorer mix)” level changes, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

And for those who thought I was crazy for saying that “Android&” and “Loop” would be on this album, I’m not going to say that I told you so. Just simply that I told y’all. 

1. Plasma
2. Time Warp (v1.1)
3. Polygon Wave (Original Mix)
4. Saisei
5. Spinning World
6. Mawaru Kagami
7. Flow
8. ∞ Loop
9. Drive’n the Rain
10. Hatenabito
11. Android&
12. Goodbye Plastic World

Some fans are already pissed that so little of this album is new, and I sympathise. But this is how it be with Japanese album releases. It gets me too. My eyes couldn’t have rolled any harder when Sony faxed out the tracklist for Hikaru Utada’s Bad Mode.

Just based on the singles and songs that we’ve heard; when I look at the sequencing, I don’t get a sense that this album is going to flow that well. “Mawaru Kagami” into “Flow”, followed by “∞ Loop”!? “Android&” is way too late in the album, and too damn funky to come right before “Goodbye Plastic World” - it shoulda been sequenced with “Polygon Wave”. And “Time Warp” and “Saisei” should also be sequenced together. But Perfume’s albums have always been sloppily sequenced. There’s no real thought that goes into making their albums flow, and this was particularly glaring with Cosmic Explorer.

So I guess I’mma be re-sequencing Plasma, the same way I re-sequenced all of Perfume’s other albums.

For those of you who were hoping to hear as little of this album as possible, take note of the following information, because two of the new songs on this album will be released in some form. The album title track “Plasma” will receive radio airplay on June 17th. I suspected that the music in the teaser video announcing the tour was from this song, but we’ll find out soon enough. If the song is receiving airplay, then that’d mean that it’s not a regular short album intro, and is instead something along the lines of LEVEL3’s “Enter the Sphere”. I’m confused. “Spinning World” will also be released as the last single before the album drops on July 27th, and it will hit streaming on July 15th, along with a music video. And then of course there is the tour which kicks off on August 8th. And with Perfume’s recent track record of releasing their tours to streaming services, I’d expect an end of 2023 release of the Plasma tour to either Netflix or Amazon Prime. But one thing at a time.

Plasma releases physically and digitally on July 27th, 2022.

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