Random J Mix: Perfume - Mawaru Kagami (Random J Mix)

A post header image, featuring the interface of audio editing software, and an image of the cover artwork for my mix of Perfume’s “Mawaru Kagami”.

Whilst the album version of “Mawaru Kagami” doesn’t feature v1.1 or album mix in its title, the album version is different to the version of the song that we heard during Perfume Live 2021 [Polygon Wave] and the version which featured as the B-side to “Flow”. Many fans speculated that the album mix of “Mawaru Kagami” would be different based on the version on Flow specifically being titled as the ‘Perfume Live 2021 [Polygon Wave]’ version. And they were right.

However. Whilst the production and mixing of the album version of “Mawaru Kagami” is much tighter, the removal of the bridge does hurt it a little.

It was inevitable that fans were going to edit versions of the song which put the bridge back in, and I’ve also done the same. Although I’ve placed the bridge somewhere a little different.

“Mawaru Kagami” is a song which is just structurally awkward. The bridge section in the Perfume Live [Polygon Wave] version of the song, whilst cool, felt like it came in way too early in the song. But taking it out completely for the album version was not the right call, because you really do feel the loss of it. And now the song just has this cute but wholly uninteresting passage of music which repeats twice in the song unnecessarily.

My edit doesn’t fix the song by any means, and that’s because “Mawaru Kagami” really needed a proper second verse, and not a second verse which also acts as a middle eight. And because of this, no matter how you try and cut up and re-arrange the song, it’s never going to fully work. Nakata really should have written another verse. But we know how he feels about Perfume songs having more than one verse these days.

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Random J Mix: Perfume - Mawaru Kagami (Random J Mix)

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