Make Believe Mailer 18: "Polygon Wave"
Is Yasutaka Nakata Having A Mid-life Crisis?
Perfume — “Polygon Wave” (2021)
Turns out writing about music isn’t a way to make a living. When I write an article and share it on social media, I’m playing a game of misdirection — in digital spaces, I’m a “writer” musing on J-pop, dropping links to The Japan Times and screaming “everything is AKB48” into the void. Logged off though, I’m really engaged in the freelance hustle, juggling a bunch of jobs across a variety of fields, many with zero connection to music or even writing. I’m not complaining — bills need to get paid, and nobody is clamoring for interviews with Japanese artists (uhhh, let me know if they are).
Usually, the real income-generating gigs at least allow me to play music, offering the fantasy that I’m still indulging in passion while living out a chillwave song. My current project, though, literally requires me to not listen to anything except…the NDA is starting to tighten…hours of academic presentations. It’s a slog. In the slivers of free time, I gravitate to Perfume’s new single “Polygon Wave” (above), partially because it’s compact, but largely because it allows my brain to wander, and think things like,
“Is Yasutaka Nakata having a mid-life crisis?”
CAPSULE — “FRUITS CLiPPER” (2006)
The key to understanding Nakata, the most accomplished Japanese producer of the 21st century, is to know he loves trends. He moved to Tokyo at the start of the new millennium and went all-in on Shibuya-kei, at least until he heard a track from Digitalism or Daft Punk or some other buzzy European electronic act at a Daikanyama party and shifted entirely to that, bringing it to his own CAPSULE (then capsule) and a fledgling idol trio he had been assigned to work on. It’s not hard to hear him taking cues from this blown-out sound, nor is it hard to hear what made Nakata stand out. Just listen to “FRUITS CLiPPER,” launching off with synthesized-speak gibberish and electro-pop pogoing…before stumbling on a heart-racing hook courtesy Toshiko Koshijima cutting through the noise. That’s Nakata’s art summed up — submerged in the digital age, but human after all.
Yet he continues to follow new developments, and that’s either kept his approach fresh over the last decade or made him lose his way, depending on who you ask. An undeniable point though — Nakata definitely became entranced by the bubble days of EDM, going solo and eventually just like, calling up Afrojack from home. I’m not interesting in litigating Digital Native or Future Pop1, but more about how weird this period must have been for Nakata. It seemed nonstop and extremely busy whenever I interviewed him, or talked to anyone in his orbit.
It must have felt so…different.
CAPSULE — “Hikari No Disco” (2021)
In the last 12 months, Nakata appears to have gotten sentimental. Perfume’s “Saisei” takes stock of the J-pop group’s existence, filled with references to their song book and with the memory bank overdrawn with its trip-through-their-career video. Subsequent single “Time Warp” moves away from the history of Perfume in favor of being about nostalgia. In 2021, he got CAPSULE out of a six-year hiatus to put out “Hikari No Disco” (above), which tightropes between a return to Aughts electro-pop form and neon-soaked retro-isms (look, a cassette tape!). Dreams of big tents have faded…for now at least2… and Nakata seems interested in returning to the somewhere he actually can’t get to…yesteryear.
“Polygon Wave” continues Nakata’s glancing back, but elevating daydreaming about how things were into a force channeling all that was great and wrapping up with all that is still great about him and Perfume. This is the first time in years that Nakata has made something that sounds like it could slide onto GAME3. It becomes a spot-the-reference challenge the higher that play count goes up, from the obvious (the synth melody is Nakata pining over peak Daft Punk and shuffling through his own pulse mutations, from the plinky-plonky “Plastic Smile” to the chug of “GAME”) to the less immediate (the piano chords rising up on the soft bridge, and the way Perfume’s voice eventually glide alongside them, is pure “Baby Cruising Love”). There’s also a lot of “Hurly Burly” DNA mixed up in there, though that mostly tells me Nakata has taste for his catalog, too.
Perfume — “Polygon Wave” Live On The Music Day (2021, Check That Piano Version!)
Every Perfume song exists as a way for the three members of the group to show off their dance skills, one of the project’s defining features. In the last, maybe, six years, their moves have probably been more important than their music, at least if you look at Perfume from the vantage of “the J-pop industry.” A subtle way this has manifested itself musically is their vocals have become far less processed, or at least audibly so. Perfume used to sound like Vocaloid software, because Nakata’s whole approach was he could control every element of the music from his PC studio…why not the singing too?
“Polygon Wave’s” most defining characteristic is how the three voices blur into a unified force, with a digital vapor trail. Everything points forward, pushing ahead, their singing bouncing off the electronics between them just right. This is Perfume, breakthrough era!, updated for modern times, down to a heavier emphasis on digi-age signifiers and the ways they confuse the human soul (we get references to artificial stars, virtual worlds, and a feeling of disconnectedness that isn’t necessarily a commentary on contemporary living…but certainly presents them as a bummer). The main hook sounds like someone trying to figure out if they are experiencing reality or something fake (“dream” repeated four times). When they do break out and get small solos on that bridge, it’s among their most emotionally well-timed punches. Between it, one of their liveliest tunes ever. Nakata stops seeing what’s new and instead takes some time turning inward.
That it’s the theme song to Japan’s The Masked Singer is just a whole other level of mind melting.
Honestly, I don’t want to overthink it too much…it’s just a to-the-point pop song delivered at the perfect length and hiding layers to unravel, musically and lyrically. That’s Perfume and Nakata summed up perfectly. But I also keep coming back to why Nakata has become so fascinated with his own artistic past — arguably his heyday — now after being a guy who has largely avoided reminiscing. Then the question, “Is Yasutaka Nakata having a mid-life crisis,” flips around.
“Are you maybe projecting here?”
The I-have-to-tweet-about-this-ahhhh excitement “Polygon Wave” generates in me…couldn’t be from the excitement of hearing sounds riffing on songs from my favorite album of all time? Am I as equally excited as Nakata to revisit electro-pop ideas from the late 2000s, and relive times that were much simpler? Is the secret to all of this glee I feel from recent Nakata projects because I have now crossed the Rubicon where I want my favorite artists to just play the hits? How am I doing? Hmmmm, let’s not dwell on that.
I think I have a better way to look at “Polygon Wave,” one that’s still a bit self-indulgent but also feels right. After years of constantly staying in motion and trying to change with the times, Yasutaka Nakata slows down a little bit and revisits his past…and finds that it doesn’t have to be static, but can be tinkered with and lead to new angles on the familiar that still contain that classic energy. Maybe at some point, the best way to keep going ahead is to take stock of what you’ve done, and realize you still have plenty left to say.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Follow the Best of 2021 Spotify Playlist Here!
(though….1. pretty mediocre albeit a weird document of Nakata wrestling with styles that…were directly influenced by him, resulting in a wild feedback loop; 2. much better than its reputation, give it another listen!)
Far be it from me to psychoanalyze a J-pop producer based off a year’s worth of material, but just going off of what I’ve heard from other musicians and their experiences…I wouldn’t be shocked if a year of COVID-19 existence maybe nudged him towards a more reflective place. Wild speculation, but you better believe if I’m right I’ll gloat about it.