Perfume (Special) « Vitamin Drop

Tracklisting
1. Perfect Star Perfect Style (パーフェクトスター・パーフェクトスタイル)
2. Linear Motor Girl (リニアモーターガール)
3. Computer City (コンピューターシティ)
4. Electro World (Album Version) (エレクトロ・ワールド)
5. inryoku (引力, lit. Gravity)
6. Monochrome Effect (モノクロームエフェクト)
7. Vitamin Drop (ビタミンドロップ)
8. Sweet Donuts (スウィートドーナッツ)
9. Foundation (ファンデーション)
10. Computer Driving (コンピュータードライビング)
11. Perfume
12. wonder2

“Perfume ~Complete Best~” is the debut album from the J-Tek trio Perfume, and is also their first best-of album. It contains all their singles up to Electro World, apart from their two Hiroshima indies singles that Nakata didn’t produce. It reached #66 on the Oricon charts upon the initial “Limited Edition” release, and #144 for the later “Regular Edition” release, which fell off of the charts for two weeks and re-entered upon the release of the “Polyrhythm” single. The “Limited Edition” was released on the 2nd of August 2006, while the “Regular Edition” was released on the 14th of February 2007.

Perfect Star Perfect Style comes in with some quiet synth playing, before my ears are ripped open by Perfume’s somewhat awful un-vocodered voices. It could be a lot worse (MEG), and when the verse comes in, they sound a bit better. It’s nice to hear them without the vocoders that GAME was absolutely plagued with. I mean, the vocoders are still there, but their real voices are easily distinguishable. The arrangement itself has quite a few rough spots, with sudden pitch changes that make no sense and some weird sounds here and there, but overall, it’s pretty good, and as said, Perfume’s voices aren’t overly bad. It’s a decent way to start their debut album, I guess.

Linear Motor Girl then kicks it up, giving us a much faster song than the predecessor that focuses a lot more on synth beeps and thumps than the smooth, musical sound PSPS had. The heavily vocodered engrish “Are you ready?” never fails to make me think of Ayumi Hamasaki and that talk show she had. Anyway, back on the song, it focuses a lot on the beeps, and the vocoders are a bit lighter when we get to the verses of the song, and they tend to harmonize pretty well. I mean, what, is it only one girl singing or something? I can barely hear anyone apart from the usual strong voice with the small changes to it in the background that I assume are the other two girls. I can’t even tell who’s singing the main part in this song. It’s alright, but it’s not too good.

Next we have Computer City, which I had dubbed an “Unconventional Ballad” in my recent J-Tek post. The song has a heavy computerized sound to it, which evidently fits the name, but the high pitch and sort of fading beeps in the background give the song a sort of space-y sound. While the verses are pretty much flat when it comes to the vocals, the chorus sounds a lot better in this respect, and I’m loving the acoustic guitar in the background. I can’t tell whether the song’s about the impending overtake technology’s putting on us, or whether it’s completely about heartbreak, because the lyrics (once translated) tend to be one huge mindfuck of the two. It could just be me, though, I guess. The vocals with the music tend to make the song sound kind of mournful or sad, even. It’s one of my favorites from the album, anyway. It would’ve fitted well on GAME, and it tends to have the most vocoder usage so far, so the vocal weaknesses are sort of covered. (Cheaters…)

I have no idea what differences the Electro World (Album Version) has from the original version, but this song is a lot heavuer than the previous four tracks. It’s pretty much the Complete Best’s take on GAME, the title track from their next album, apart from the presence of actual vocals and a meaning. The new opening has a nice ethereal, soothing sound to it before we’re treated to more synth beeping. I rather enjoy how the vocals sound throughout the song, but the extended notes in the chorus can be a bit grating at times. The song has a much heavier usage of synth compared to the previous songs, and the vocoder’s used a lot more here too; probably on a similar level to Computer City. The extended instrumentals after the chorus are brilliant, too, as is the one thrown in the middle of the verses. The song tends to sound a lot better after you’ve heard it going for a while instead of sitting through the extended introduction, but it’s definitely one of the stronger tracks on the album. The lyrics sort of make me wonder whether this could be called an “unconventional ballad”, too.

And now we’re back into a lighter, almost idol sound with inryoku. The opening with the short cuts of Kashiyuka singing the title of the song over and over is unbelievably adorable, and the chorus, with its continued usage of synth beeping and the cheery backing track, sounds pretty good too. The repeating of the “pa” sound tends to get on my nerves a bit, as does the sort of flat sound the song has. The use of the piano (organ, maybe?)/synthesizer to make it SOUND like whatever the hell it is in the background sounds nice though.

Say hello to the namesake of my previous blog~ I actually have no idea why the hell I decided to use Monochrome Effect, because the linearly boring synth and horrible, wavery un-vocodered vocals make this song a real pain to listen to. The chorus sounds a bit better, but the verses are absolutely unbearable. It sounds like a Tek-Idol song, really. I guess the odd vocals could be considered somewhat… Erm… “Cute”, but it’s not really working.

Current namesake~ It’s actually sort of ironic that Monochrome Effect (my first blog) is right before Vitamin Drop, because I had absolutely no idea when I chose this name. Vitamin Drop still sounds sort of reminiscent of an idol song, but it does so in a much more interesting manner, with the lively synth and sparkling beeps that make up the arrangement. The vocals are still largely un-vocodered, but they sound a lot stronger in this song. It’s sort of linear still, but the arrangement has its quieter moment near the end, which helps switch it up at least a little bit.

Now we have the first ever song Nakata produced for Perfume. Sweet Donuts carries a sort of idol sound to it STILL (this was still their image at the beginning of their career, really), but it carries a more computerized sound than songs like Monochrome Effect and Vitamin Drop, while sounding more unbelievably cute than either of those songs did. The weaker vocals are still here, but both the chorus and verses sound so cute that I can let it pass~ Despite being a rabid idol hater, this song is actually standable.

Foundation follows this up, and I must admit that I’m rather surprised to see a b-side make it onto the album. The high opening, lowering synth sounds are sort of annoying, but the arrangement sounds great when it comes in, following a much smoother arrangement compared to the beeps you can hear a lot on this album. The chorus is extremely annoying though, if not only because of how the title’s said, and how it lacks any real lyrics. This is sort of a skip track, really.

Computer Driving goes back to the beep method, and it ends up sounding sort of like a slower Linear Motor Girl. It has a cuter sound to it, as does most of the latter half of this album, and that’s sort of what kills this song, along with the continued linearity that seems intent on dragging the song on with the once again un-vocodered vocals.

Perfume, the song titled after the band, comes in next, and it’s a drastic change from the rest of the style of the album. The song carries a heavy 8-bit sound to it, while still keeping a cure, upbeat sound. The vocals are vocodered, but it’s still not at an extremely high level. Just enough to make them fit. It’s one of the fastest songs on the album, which doesn’t always work with the 8-bit sound, but it worked pretty well here. I’m surprised that this song was a b-side in the first place considering its name, and the fact that it’s a b-side makes me surprised that it’s even here. Either way, it’s a good song, especially for the NES and SNES players out there, if they weren’t annoyed to hell by the music.

wonder2 closes the album, and the echoing “la”’s over the spacey synth doesn’t sound very good at all. When the girls stop ad-libbing and it’s just the arrangement, it’s not as bad, and the verses tend to sound very well done. I think this is the first time the vocoder is used to sort of granulate their voices and break segments up into multiple sounds, too. It’s another b-side, but this tends to be my second favorite of the three (after Perfume), apart from those damned “la”’s. It was a nice way to end the album, and it fits the position well, too.

Album Score
B-

Favorite Tracks
1. Computer City
2. Electro World (Album Version)
3. Perfume
4. Sweet Donuts
5. wonder2

While the album goes towards the idol sound to an annoyingly large amount, a lot of the songs here are at least decent, with the songs towards the end of the era sounding a lot more like the Perfume that we all know and love. I’d call it a decent introduction to the girls, but GAME is, overall, a superior album.

Okay, we all know what a Perfume fanboy I am, and as such, I always try to find everything I can about them. Namely, their entire discography. I just managed to find the one single that’s been eluding me for ages, so to celebrate, I decided to review it in all of its glory. Presenting the first special Musing/Review combo~

———-

AKIHABALOVE was a special event release by Perfume, and is not considered one of their official releases due to the guest producer, DJ Momo-i (Better known as Momoi Haruko). It was only available during the Uchimizu events during the summer of 2005, and is now a collectors item worth around $450 due to its rarity.

Track Listing
1. AKIHABALOVE (Perfume x DJ Momo-i)
2. AKIHABALOVE (Karaoke) (Perfume x DJ Momo-i)

Despite how stupid it may seem to review a concert single, this is Perfume as you haven’t seen them before. You can attribute this to DJ Momo-i, the producer of this single (instead of the usual Yasutaka Nakata.) This hasn’t appeared on an album by the girls to date, either.

Anyway, this song has a much heavier techno sound to it compared to any other works by the girls. It’s full of aggressive synth, and you can at least vaguely hear an electric guitar at certain intervals throughout the song. The vocals of the girls aren’t synthesized this time around, yet they still seem to suit the new style of music shown in this single. It shows that the girls can handle music that’s a lot more mature compared to their normal works, while still retaining the cutesy feeling their usual songs have. While Momoi is a vocalist/singer herself, she only features in this song by providing the back-up vocals for the girls, which can only really be heard in the Karaoke version of the song. It’s a shame, as Momoi is another great techno pop artist, but at least she gets some sort of feature in the song.

HOWEVER, I do have one gripe with the song. While the chorus is great, it can sound a bit awkward at times, and the verses do tend to get a little boring due to the quieter nature of them. It’s still a great song, so I won’t mark it down for it, but it can get annoying.

Anyway, despite this being released in 2005, I find myself hoping another collaboration between Perfume and Momoi takes place soon, because these two work great together.

Overall Grade
A+

For you readers who are getting sick of the cutesy style Perfume is well known for, AKIHABALOVE may be worth a listen due to the individuality the track shows. It even works well as a karaoke if you’re into the heavy techno style of music. Definitely the best song by Perfume, if not solely for its originality.

———-

I realize I did rave about this song, but in my opinion, it deserves it. This single alone should have shown Nakata that they don’t have to oversell the cutesy images of the girls. Anyway, both ways work. It’s just great to hear this different style of music from the girls.

This won’t be the first random/special review I do, either. They won’t be announced or anything, and I won’t be doing them very often (I’d say around one or two a month), because I don’t want to cause TOO much confusion to you readers. Not all of the specials will be about Perfume, either. I was going to review a special album instead, but I was overly excited by finding this, so I just had to do it~

I can’t provide a direct link to the song at the moment, so instead, I’ve decided to embed the music video. Credit goes to whoever uploaded it to YouTube~

I can provide a link to the forum where I downloaded it later~ Also note, this new section is only for special releases by featured artists, or albums released with no singles by artists that I don’t regularly feature. If I ever decide to review a past album by someone that I DO feature, that’ll go in the normal review section.