Keys to Everything

It had to be done, didn’t it?

Perfume are, without a doubt, one of the most powerful girl groups in the Jpop sphere for a very long time. And it’s almost impossible to believe that they could get any more popular… but they have and will continue to do so for a while with the way things are going. 

Being honest, techno is not my thing so it took me a long time to buy into these girls’ music and I still don’t all the time. Suzuki Ami was as far as I went and even I didn’t buy DOLCE, or even like it that much. I find techno dry and uninteresting and the songs go on far, far, far too long.

The reason I gave Perfume a chance was because I jumped on the proverbial band-wagon. When GAME was released the blogosphere went absolutely mad and I didn’t understand what was going on at all. I remember hearing Baby Cruising Love when it first came out and not really being particularly enthused by it and then hearing Secret Secret when that came out and liking it well enough, but it took me a lazy afternoon and not much to do before I downloaded GAME and decided to review it.

Thumbs up for the most part, but certainly not my best post (yet one of my most popular – explain this to me), but what it did do was help me realise that I did like Perfume and made me obssessed with Chocolate Disco, Polyrhythm and Secret Secret. And I was for a long time… unfortunately after a few months that died a death and I haven’t listened to most of the album tracks since.

love the world came out and I ignored it. Dream Fighter after that… whatever.

I’m a bad fan because I love those songs now and I ignored them completely when they released. But now with One Room Disco’s release I’m determined not to miss something again.

I like One Room Disco quite a bit. As other bloggers have pointed out, it is Chocolate Disco’s spiritual twin in a couple of ways… the title being one and the introduction being the other one I can think of right now. The video is cute but lacking a little but the song still has to grow on me, as do all Perfume songs in one way or another. 

One thing that I can say right now about the video is that I hate what Nocchi is wearing. Actually, costume design in this one is a range of badness with Nocchi being the worst and Kashiyuka being the best. Do they look much like they plan on disco-ing? No, I think not.

A-chan is probably my favourite of the three girls. She always looks like she’s enjoying everything she’s doing whereas the other two try a little too hard to ‘get into it’ and they don’t come off as well.

Another thing you cannot deny about Perfume is that they can dance! They have really, almost needlessly, complicated choreography which they perform beautifully everytime. One Room Disco has some great choreography though you won’t be able to see much of it until a nice clear live performance surfaces. Polyrhythm has the robot walk. Chocolate Disco had the mad hopping and so on and so forth. And that’s one thing that I really admire about them…

One thing I don’t like, however, is the fact that they can’t sing live. Not because of any lack of talent but because of the fact that in the original track the girls’ voices have been digitised to hell and they couldn’t sing it in vaguely the same way live. Also, I cannot distinguish each of their voices at all when I’m listening and that annoys me a little. But moving on…

Perfume won’t slow down anytime soon and, though I may not like everything they do, we can expect a lot more from them before they either evolve into something new (sing live, perhaps) or simply stop existing -

I think my mind’s imploded. I can’t think of much to say now… It’s the Berryz/C-ute post all over again.

Er…if you sat through this thank you for reading, you obviously expected to reach enlightenment through the torture but I’m afraid I’ll have to dissapoint you on that front. All I’ve managed to tell you is;

• I like Perfume
• I didn’t at first
• A-chan is my favourite
• They can dance

and if the fact I can summarise over 700 words in four bullet points isn’t telling about something, I don’t know what is.

Bye-bye