(the) Road to the Deep East

To be frank, when I listened to Perfume's new song 'love the world' from its preview few weeks ago, I just thought, 'Polyrhythm reloaded', and I wasn't intrigued so much and thought I might not buy this single.

However, just days before, when I listened to leaked preview of its coupling, 'edge' days before, I was excited, and felt the exactly same emotion when I listened to 'the electro world' 2 years ago. It was like, “Isn't this the masterpiece of perfume of all?”, and I'd been waiting to listen to this song from CD quality audio.

And now, today on July 8th, finally, the day has come!!


(track list)
1. love the world
2. edge
3. love the world -original instrumental-
4. edge -extended mix-

(*limited edition includes music video of love the world'


Well, to tell the my rating for 'edge' first, it is 10.0 kote.

MANKOTE dayon!!

This is a really awesome song. Our man in Shibuya Roppongi, Nakata Yasutaka made it again.

It becomes a redundant explanation, but I have to repeat. One of the greatness of this most talented Japanese music producer is, he doesn't separate idol pop and other works.

It is very contrary to other music producers working in idol pops. Even if he or she was an actually a famous music producer, when the producer produces the songs for idols, strangely, they think of the customers who listen to the song and change their original style. Weird chorus for chants, ,bizarre rhythm intermezzo for wotagei.

I have to admit, my hero before Yasutaka, a man initials J.N, who used to be a producer of an idol group and became one of representative Japanese song writer for the works from the famous artist which belongs to the same agency as the idol group(*1), was this type.

However, Yasutaka doesn't set any barriers to separate his own world (capsule, MEG, etc) and idol pop group(Perfume). According to some interviews with him, he intentionally doesn't care about what kind of people are listening to the music, and is enjoying the situation created by the collision of music and the audience.

(*1) In a nutshell, the producer of 'Lovers Again' from EXILE.

(spoiler & long entry warning)

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This edge is the best example of collision between Yasutaka's music and the audience. It's perfect electro house music, which hadn't been recognized by many audience, especially idol pop fans. Yasutaka excavated electro house from the literal cutting edge from Japanese club music scene, and exposed it to the idol pop fans including common people who became Perfume fans recently.

I won't say he's the first one. For example, over 20 years ago, enka shinger Yoshi Ikuzo introduced hip-hop with 'Ora Tokyo sa iguda', and over 10 years ago, Komuro Tetsuya introduced jungle with 'Wow Wow Tonight' from a comedian Hamada of Down Town. But both of them are more moderate quotation arranged to Japanese popoular music, and this Nakata's edge is more shocking and direct than these two.

And we have to notice at the length of this song. 6 minutes and 31 seconds electro house performed by 19 year-old girls. And it will sell at least 100 thousands of copies in this country. I bet Marty Friedman is astonished by Yasutaka again. And its 'extended remix' is 8 minutes and 40 seconds!! It's sure 'Edge' willl become the world record of longest JPOP idol song, surpassing 'Never Ending Story' from SweetS.(5minutes and 46 seconds.)

And another greatness of this song is its lyrics. Since Chocolate Disco, or when Nakata Yasutaka began to write the lyrics, Perfume's lyrics became moderate and cuter than Kinoko era. (Computer City, Electro world.. etc.)

But in this song, these three girls starts the shocking and suggestive tale.

'誰だっていつかは死んでしまうんでしょ
だったらその前にわたしの
一番硬くて尖った部分を
ぶつけて　see new world, say yeah!!'

(Everybody dies in the end.
Then, before the time comes,
I will see new world crushing
my hardest and sharpest part of my body. )

The hardest and sharpest part of girl's body...

Well, as far as I know, women have hidden three kinds of this hard part in their body. (If you refute, 'women have just two, and mine are also two', it's the evidence that you are a virgin boy.)

... Even if I forgot about this Ryann Connel-esque imagination, I think these lyrics are beautiful and match the aggressive melody of 'Edge'.

Especially, I liked the part 'see new world'. These words also sound like '死ぬわ'(I gonna die). So, this lyrics have double meaning. Will this pessimistic girl in this song live and see the future(see new world), or just die after self-abandonment(死ぬわ）? The answer depends on the listener's thought.

And it seems to me this is the future girls in 'puppy love' in Game, who experienced tsundere love, the love of 'ultimate reliance'(絶対的な信頼) and 'action in contrast(対照的な行動)'. In fact, these songs have similar phrases.

*Puppy love
-どうだっていいみたい感じ (as if I don't care at all)
-そんな適当な感じで (like that, not seriously)

*edge
それはそんなかんじで (just like that.)

*It's typical ambiguous Japanese and hard to translate them, but just understand both of them have 'not serious' nuance.

Anyway, as a 1.5-lingual person (0.75 Japanese + 0.75 English), I love this kind of play on words, and I liked these phrase very much. The alliteration of 'Down Down' and 'だんだん(dandan, graduately) is also beautiful.

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It seems I spent too many words for this song, Edge, even though it is just a coupling of this single. But please understand how deeply I was impressed by this Perfume's newest work.

As for 'love the world', it still seems to me 'Polyrhythm ver.2', but after I listened this song over 20 times, I liked this song, especially the change of pitch with 'Chu-Chu-Chu'. So, now I can give 8.5 kote to love the world.

For two and half years since I discovered this group, Perfume, or Yasutaka always amazes me, and amuses me. I'd been afraid that Nakata's talent may end for recent too busy works, but as far as I listened 'edge' (and 'love the world'), he is still alright.