Perfume blast off to the funky beat and give their first televised performance of “Cosmic Treat”

A screenshot of Perfume performing “Cosmic Treat” on NHK’s Utacon. Wearing the green space uniform dresses they wear on the album cover for Nebula Romance: Part 1 and in the music video for “Cosmic Treat”. The stage features a purple sparkly backdrop and an orchestra can be seen sat on stage, positioned on stage risers.

Perfume gave their first televised performance of “Cosmic Treat”. But, before blasting off to the funky beat, they performed “Baby Cruising Love” wearing fashionable outfits. Yes bitch. FASHIONABLE outfits. Nocchi knew she looked good. a-chan was feeling every inch of her ponytail. And Kashiyuka was regretting that long ass skirt, given that she had to kneel in it. But we’re dealing with a group who have had to perform in three layers of outfits on stage with no fans. Some long bulky ass skirt ain’t shit for Kashiyuka.

⚠️ The video quality defaults to the lowest setting, which looks like absolute shit. So, upon pressing play on the video, click the gear icon to change the video quality to 720p.

Perfume performing “Baby Cruising Love” on Utacon | Video courtesy of prfm-multiverse

Perfume performing “Cosmic Treat” on Utacon | Video courtesy of prfm-multiverse

Let’s talk about the choreo for “Cosmic Treat”. I was lukewarm on it when I first saw it in the music video. But now having seen the entire thing (kinda, as they performed a shortened version of the song and changed the end pose), I like it more than I did initially. Once again we’re seeing Mikiko fold in certain movements and motifs from other songs. One such instance which stood out to me, being the hand thing with the waving fingers for the end pose, which is reminiscent of the ending pose of “Polyrhythm”. And something I didn’t pick up on from the music video, but noticed with this live performance, is that the pose Perfume are holding on the regular edition Nebula Romance: Part 1 album cover, is in the “Cosmic Treat” routine. It’s really cool to see that Team Perfume are tying everything together in the smallest of ways. I really do hope this carries through into the tour.

But I can’t help but feel that the routine is missing something, which is also how I feel about the song.

“Cosmic Treat” is such a vibrant song that makes you wanna move your entire body, so I was expecting some element of that in the routine. And yet, the chorus feels so static compared to the verses. When the chorus hits, it’s like the energy just gets sucked out of the choreo. I felt similarly about “The Light”, where there was once again a mismatch of energy and a lack of movement for a chorus which is so vibrant.

It’s strange. Because “Cosmic Treat” has the type of routine I expected “Ima Ima Ima” to have, and “Ima Ima Ima” has all of the movement and energy I expected “Cosmic Treat” to have. It’s like they Freaky Fridayed. But I do like that the choreo for “Cosmic Treat” feels like it’s part of the same story as “Ima Ima Ima”. The same goes for “The Light” too. They feel connected in ways, beyond being choreographed by the same person, and I like that. There is a real sense of the choreography telling a story which isn’t in the song.

Perfume | NHK

I think “Cosmic Treat” is going to be one of those routines which hits or misses depending on how it’s staged. Some routines just work no matter what, because they are SO strong, i.e., “Spending All My Time”, “Polygon Wave”, “Ima Ima Ima”. Others need a staging / production boost to make them work better, and I think this is gonna be “Cosmic Treat”. With great lighting and stage visuals which can add energy to the chorus that the choreo doesn’t have, a performance of “Cosmic Treat” could be massively elevated. Another great stage production choice would be to have Perfume perform this song with the band, just like in the music video. One of the cool aspects of the televised performance was members of the orchestra in the back bouncing along to the song. The conductor looked like he was ready to buss all the way down. And given the style of “Cosmic Treat”, it could work so well with a live band and an orchestra, something I tried to factor in with my Extended Mix. So hopefully we get a Perfume FES performance where Perfume perform “Cosmic Treat” with a band, just as they did with “Natural ni Koishite”, which sounded amazing played live.

I’d be more forgiving of the choreo if Perfume actually sang live. And maybe their choreographer Mikiko considered that. Because not only do Perfume have mics, but it seems like a routine which wouldn’t be so crazy for Perfume to pull off whilst singing live. A lot of the time when Perfume are performing with handheld mics, they are actually singing into them, we just don’t hear it. But there are some performances where if you listen closely, you might catch moments where you can hear their live vocals due to the mic levels being turned down super low so they sit in the mix of the song. I can’t see the mics being on and volume up for “Cosmic Treat” anytime soon. But Perfume have been surprising me with everything concerning Nebula Romance: Part 1 so far, so who knows!?

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Perfume blast off to the funky beat and give their first televised performance of “Cosmic Treat”

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