Behind the Scenes of Perfume, Japan's Most Futuristic Pop Group

For more than 10 years, fragrance has been one of the most popular and best-selling artists in Japan, with a distinctive electro-pop sound supported by a futuristic and elegant image. But the musical production of the trio is only part of the equation. Live shows from Perfume are a dazzling showdown of technology and choreography that turn cavernous arenas into science-fiction marvels.

The Future Parfum World Tour will travel to North America tomorrow with a show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. I attended the Yokohama meeting last December, and met the band – and the mastermind behind the band's live production – to discover what was at the core of Perfume's fusion of technology. and pop culture.

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Fragrance formed in a talented academy in Hiroshima around the turn of the millennium, but the group's popularity skyrocketed with the release of the 2008 album THU, which turned out to be one of the most influential records in J-pop's recent history. Producer Yasutaka Nakata relies on the electronics of his Capsule project, influenced by Shibuya-kei, to produce a limited collection of innovative techno-pop songs.

Fragrances became important well before the global explosion of EDM. The futuristic image was therefore perfectly suited to Nakata's electro productions. "When we were younger, we used to sing like divas," says Ayaka "A-chan" Nishiwaki. "But when we met Nakata for the first time and started making electro music, this image was linked to robots and one thing led to another," says Ayano "Nocchi" Omoto.

Minimalist videos for early singles such as "Polyrhythm" set the tone, and high level collaborations with companies like Panasonic, NHK and NTT Docomo followed. "We have always felt a connection with our fans, but the use of technology really brings us closer," says Yuka "Kashiyuka" Kashino. "For example, showing Twitter messages in 3D images on stage – lets fans discover our show through technology." A-chan adds, "It's not like technology defines perfume, but since technology exists, perfume wants to make the most of it."

This is certainly the case. Perfume's concerts do not look like anything you've seen before. Using advanced visuals with motion capture and complex transparent screen arrangements, each song has an extremely aggressive aesthetic that enhances the choreography and the music itself.

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The advanced live production is largely the work of Rhizomatiks, an experimental art collective founded in 2006 by Daito Manabe, who also directed the video "1mm" below. I met Manabe for about an hour in his studio in Tokyo, and much of the talk involved him showing me various mind-boggling work going on on his MacBook Pro. Rhizomatiks has so many projects going on at the same time that Manabe has to keep track of how the technology is shared among them, with a chart that looks like the 300-year-old Tokyo Metro map.

Rhizomatiks works closely with Mikiko Mizuno, Perfume's choreographer and director of the Elevenplay dance troupe. "We first do very experimental projects with Elevenplay, and if the technology works well, we use it with Perfume," says Manabe. "It's a bit like research and development with Elevenplay and a bigger application with Perfume. We really can not fail at a Perfume concert with so many people, so we test a lot first. "

Much of Rhizomatiks' technology is exclusive. During a 2014 New Year NHK show, for example, the group went so far as to develop their own drones to pilot nine flashing lanterns around Perfume members as they played "Cling Cling".

"Nobody sells safe drones," says Manabe. "We are afraid that regular drones will cause injuries. If ours hits anyone, the drone itself will break but nobody will be hurt. The battery lasts only three minutes, to be light enough, so you can not really sell it, but it's good for concerts. Many people were injured during performances with commercial drones. "

For the Future Pop tour, however, Rhizomatiks is using consumer gadgets for the first time. The song "Tiny Baby" sees the three members play each in front of an iPhone X attached to a microphone stand; their faces are displayed on large screens above the stage and the iPhone's TrueDepth camera is used to display various effects such as words coming out of their mouths.

The visual effects software was developed by two Rhizomatiks engineers. "I think the iPhone is currently the most stable face tracking technology," says Manabe. "It's easy to use and the API is very sophisticated. We also control a lot of lighting. Therefore, if we only used an RGB camera, it might not be robust enough. "

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Surprisingly, Perfume members do not always know the full range of their performances. "In fact, we have not seen ourselves with production yet, so we can not really say it," Nocchi said when I asked the band if they had a favorite song on the Future Pop tour. "I just imagine" Tiny Baby "because I did not see it myself," says Kashiyuka, "but the choreography is very simple: the text comes out of our mouth, so it must be fun for the public to watch it. "

From the point of view of perfumes, the most difficult is well before they set foot on stage. "Daito [Manabe] It really makes things easier for us. All we have to do is nail the choreography to perfection, then he'll do the rest, "says Nocchi. "But to achieve production, we have to record 3D videos of the choreography on a green screen so many times, and that's the hardest part."

In addition to the Future Pop tour, the time that Perfume has in the United States also attends some performances at Coachella, which by necessity will be a much more refined production. I saw Perfume for the first time at the Osaka Summer Sonic Festival in 2011 and, as expected, it was a very different experience – you can only do a lot of things in broad daylight with schedules limited transition.

"Festivals sometimes go to people who are just getting to know Perfume and seeing us for the first time. It's just ourselves on stage. It's a challenge, "says Kashiyuka. "With technology on a real production, we can express more music and choreography as we want. Technology helps that. "

"In festivals, we're more aggressive, just let people know who we are," says A-chan. "But with shows like [the Future Pop tour]we are responsible until the end to make sure that people enjoy the show. So, on the one hand, it's relaxing, but on the other, we feel pressure. There is so much satisfaction when we overcome the pressure that we can not stop playing. "

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Despite their fame and futuristic image, Perfume members have a relatively unobtrusive public presence against Japanese celebrity standards and do not use individual social media. "It's a management policy," laughs Nocchi, who claims not to have had a smartphone before the iPhone SE. "We are the first to do these things, but we can not. It's more about security for our privacy. We like to publish on our albums and other contents on the official account of Parfums, but not on ourselves. "

The group has recently opened a TikTok account, however, and it is worth noting that they have all switched to the iPhone XS. Kashiyuka also started with the iPhone 3G, making it an extreme first in Japan. "I'm pretty slow to understand, so I'm surprised when things go like" uh, now the phone recognizes my face ?! "Nocchi said. "But I'm trying to follow because that's how the world is changing."

Like an album, Future Pop is not as soundly revolutionary as some of Nakata's earlier work, which may be unavoidable given the increasing power of EDM and electro-pop. But according to the group, Nakata considers the account as the definitive iteration of the perfume. "Nakata-san created the title and has his own idea," says Kashiyuka. "But he said at the beginning, when he started producing perfumes, people said that our music was a" future pop. "At the time, he did not think it was really futuristic – there was so much more to work on, but now, looking at everything he did with Perfume, he said it was was future pop and it's like the end result of an album. "

The obvious question is therefore, what is the future of the future pop of perfumes? "Only Nakata knows!" Said A-chan. "We believe in him and we will follow where he leads us," Nocchi admits.

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Manabe, meanwhile, is constantly thinking of new technologies that can be used for live performances – he is particularly interested in generating visuals through brain badyzes by functional magnetic resonance imaging (FRI). although he concedes that the idea is probably more suited to the home than the concert hall.

In the shorter term, 5G networking is more immediately exciting for Rhizomatiks. "What I'm most looking for is the ability to send videos from public phones on the stage," says Manabe. "We organized an event called Sayonara Kokuritsu in the former national stadium. We asked the public to take a picture and send it to a server. We then built a 3D model of the stadium with the help of these images. But it was not real-time – they had to send a picture over Wi-Fi and it took too much time. If we had 5G, the camera could send images to the server in real time and we could use the 3D model instantly. "

It's something that Rhizomatiks is already working on. Manabe showed me a video demonstrating the concept, albeit with some cable-connected phones. It would be possible to use Wi-Fi for a small number of devices transmitting compressed video, but the technology could not be deployed in a crowded arena without 5G.

A few days before our interview, I noticed that Manabe had posted on Instagram a picture of her meeting with Apple's senior vice president, Phil Schiller. So I had to ask him what they were talking about. "We just have a tough conversation about RA issues," he says. "And also how, when we have 5G networks, the AR technology will change a lot, so we discussed that future."

Did Apple know the performance of "Tiny Baby" on iPhone X? "Yes, I showed him. They loved it. "