Perfume debut a new song “Love Cloud” at their Code of Perfume gig in London

Perfume held their London show Code of Perfume on June 3rd. Marking 8 years since they last performed in London, and a whole decade since they last performed at the very same venue in which Code of Perfume was held. Perfume coulda told a bit of a story here and milked it during the gig, but they didn’t. But we’ll get into that in my post for the show, as I was fortunate enough to attend it.

As if Perfume holding a show in London wasn’t big enough for their UK based fans and those who flew over from Japan (and MANY did), they debuted a brand song titled “Love Cloud”.

Perfume performing “Love Cloud” at Code of Perfume | 📺 YouTube: LL & LSV

A friend who I was at the gig with said that “Love Cloud” reminded them of something from Persona, and this is honestly the best way to describe this song.

“Love Cloud” follows on somewhat from the sound of Plasma, but not so much so that it sounds like a unreleased song from the album in the same way that “Tokyo Girl” sounded like something intended for Cosmic Explorer and “Saisei” sounded like something intended for P Cubed. It truly does feel like a line has been drawn under Plasma, whilst also feeling like it’s building on it. “Love Cloud” is basically a sexy club version of “Spinning World”, and I am VERY okay with this. Because “Spinning World” is a fucking fantastic song and one of Perfume’s best. It was JUST the type of song they needed, so knowing it is a potential direction their music could be going further with, I’m all for it. But who the fuck knows with Nakata.

There’s been no press release for the song, but there is official word from a-chan herself via an Instagram post. Although she speaks little of the song itself, she does share that choreo for the song was pretty last minute.

Chances are that “Love Cloud” will get “Mawaru Kagami”’d. In that it will not be a single, but will instead end up as a B-side to whatever the next promotional single is. Making “Love Cloud” would be both a shame and a mistake though, because “Love Cloud” is definitely single material. Perfect for the Summer. Perfect for Pride month. Nasty Nakata knew what he was doing. Talkin’ ‘bout ‘I don’t wanna dance. I don’t wanna talk. I just wanna feel you all night long.’

Perfume are in need of a song which will help shift people’s perception of Perfume from the box that they themselves have put themselves in. I think “Polygon Wave” went some way toward that (despite how much it sounded like “Polyrhythm”) as did the follow up singles “Flow” and “Spinning World”. So it’s great to hear “Love Cloud” tow the same line. From JPN onward, Perfume’s music stopped being cool or trendy, which was kinda weird after Game and Triangle. So it’s cool to hear their sound going back to that, as it’s more inline with where I think Perfume’s sound should be at this point. It’s where I expected it to go for LEVEL3’s follow-up, but we know how that shit went.

Hopefully Universal and Amuse make the right call and don’t fumble an opportunity to create a necessary shift for Perfume’s sound and image. “Love Cloud” would be the perfect song to do it with.

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