#level3

AM: Given the way in which you hear your music, would you class yourselves fans of Perfume? What music do you tend to listen to in your daily lives? N: Yes, we’re our biggest fans! We are huge fans of Yasutaka Nakata songs, so we are proud to deliver them to our fans, and we proudly perform them at our shows. Though in my daily life, I listen to different kinds of music. Before I go to sleep, I have a playlist for that. If I want to get hyped up, I listen to dance music. I listen to whatever suits my feelings at the time. I listen to rock too.

K: I don’t listen to much Japanese music to be honest. I listen more of international music. When I listen to Japanese music, I tend to pay too much attention to the lyrics, so to listen to music as background music, non-Japanese music is better for me.

AM: ‘Level 3’ has your first fully English language song on it, ‘Spending All My Time’. Was it strange to sing in another language? Was it unexpected when the song was presented to you? N: Yes, it was unexpected and I was surprised. We generally prefer to sing in Japanese, so when [‘Spending All My Time’] was first presented to us, it was difficult at first. But when we played abroad, everyone sang along with that song, and seeing that made me feel so glad that we recorded this track!

AM: You recently played your first European shows. What was that like? AC: It seemed like fans in Europe really enjoyed our show. Japanese audiences tend to send us messages like “we’re having fun”, but in Europe, they were just enjoying in their own ways.

AM: It’s quite unusual for big J-pop acts to come over to Europe, but Kyary Pamyu Pamyu also made the journey over the London earlier this year. Do you think we’ll see more J-pop acts over here in the future? And will we see you again? AC: I don’t know if more J-pop acts will go to Europe in the future, but it makes us happy that a lot of Japanese artists are going abroad to promote Japan. We’re just simply happy that we got to go play at the home of techno music and we hope that there will be more demand for us in Europe.

K: We definitely want to go back to Europe and do shows!

AM: Your performances often feature very high-tech elements. What has your favourite innovation been? Is there anything you don’t use in performances anymore that you’d like to bring back? AC: I liked the projection mapping performance we did at [the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity, where the group won a design award for their website] and on the European tour. It’s a high-tech performance where projection moves with our dances and it’s only projected on our body and dresses, nowhere else. It’s so high-tech that I really don’t know how to explain it!

K: We have been playing at smaller venues recently so we haven’t been able to use a lifting platform. But when we play big venues again, I want to bring that back. I want to get on the lifter and perform from high up! This allows people in the back to see us in big venues.

AM: As well as the technical side, your dancing is always extremely precise and tightly synchronised. How long do you rehearse before each show? N: Probably about a month, including choreography.

K: For big shows, we spend about a month but smaller shows like the recent European tour, we only rehearsed for about a week.

AM: What happens if something goes wrong on stage? AC: If something happens on stage, we continue like nothing happened. If our shoe falls off, we immediately put it back on. If I forget the dance, I look to other members. If the lights went out, I try to speak to the audience and let our voices be heard. Anything can happen in live shows and we try to enjoy that moment.

AM: How involved with the choreography and design of your shows are you? K: We let [long-time collaborator] Mikiko take charge in terms of choreography, though for live arrangements we do tell her our ideas.

N: We put together the setlist, and we tell our stage director brief ideas like “we want to get close to audience”.

AC: We tell them our dreams like we want to fly or we want this kind of stage.

K: And then we leave it to the technical team to tell us if that’s possible or not.

AM: You’ve been together since 2000. Do you still get the same excitement from being in Perfume? What are you favourite parts of the job? K: Yes, we’re still excited because we’re tackling new things all the time, including the latest technology.