Perfume: The Music Drug

If you can’t get actual drugs or you’ve had your stash confiscated, there’s always Perfume. They’re a Japanese electro-pop group from Hiroshima—three people: Ayano Ōmoto, Yuka Kashino, and Ayaka Nishiwaki—and they make music that sounds like it was built in a lab specifically to liquify your brain.

You put on Computer Driving or Vitamin Drop or Electro World and for the next few minutes you’re not thinking about anything except the colors and the noise. Your actual problems just disappear. The speed is disorienting in a good way. When it stops you’re left stupid-happy, the kind of happiness that makes you wonder if you’ve actually broken something in there or if this is what feeling good feels like for people who aren’t naturally depressed.

The weird part is that the feeling sticks around. You’re not quite the same after you’ve heard that much intensity. Something rearranges itself in there.

I listen to Perfume when I’m working. Probably explains most of what I end up making.