It’s just like me to offer to write a quick-take on a topic that really has a lot more going on than just a simplified quick-take!

The MV for Maison book girl‘s recent album’s closing track “Yumea” (Dream) entered public consciousness over the weekend, and it’s a beautiful piece of visual art. If you watched it on a pure surface level with no backstory about it’s intent, it’s still a gorgeous experience in the arena of sound and vision. I’m thinking it’s reasonably safe that the highly loyal Bukuga fans out there have already seen it, but I recommend a rewatch anyway, and if you haven’t, please take a moment. There won’t be a quiz or anything, but it’s important to understand what we’re discussing, and also, it’s a great song and you just really should…

The opening scenes are a questionnaire session leading into a sleep test in a medical facility. It’s then followed with a series of dreamy visuals of girls in headphones looking all introspective. Okay fine, so girls in headphones looking introspective on bus rides isn’t terribly groundbreaking, I’ll cede you that point, but those surreal images that pulsate in time with the odd flickering sound in the song, what’s that about? Well, the end of the video is kind enough to help explain that, and that’s where one realizes the true beauty of this MV.

And so things begin to make sense. (Well, mostly.) Maison book girl’s new album, “Yume” contains a series of short sound bursts titled “fMRI” that work as a segue between some of the tracks. Those sounds you hear are actually derived from MRI scans of the group’s members! SO not only does Maison book girl make smart music, they have their brains captured in the audio of their craft. It’s so blasted brilliant that I love it even more than I already did beyond the basic level of it being excellent music.

And then there’s the even heavier bit. Those pulsating images are actually captures of brain activity as the members of the group focused their thoughts of photographs of physical objects. This was pretty fascinating to me because truthfully I didn’t realize the ability to map brain pattern visuals was currently this sophisticated. Not only is this a terrific song and an amazing MV, but there’s some next-level science at work here.

I also just found this all very timely and refreshing because personally for me, this is what I come to this new era of idol music looking for. I’ll take this kind of forward-thinking creative (and innovative) energy over lazy shenanigans any day. More of this, please.

This MV technically falls past the cut-off for Homicidols Best-Of for this year, (Which is exactly why Maniac came up with this time frame.) so I’m going to make completely certain you remember the “Yumea” MV this time next year. Count on it!