Surprise! Kero Kero Bonito EP out today - listen to Civilisation I

September 30, 2019

Happy Monday! Ahead of their North American tour kickoff on Thursday, Kero Kero Bonito have blessed your final day of September with a brand new EP titled Civilisation I, out everywhere today. Written and produced by KKB in Gus' room, Civilisation I was recorded using hardware only.

If the band’s most recent full-length, Time 'n’ Place, was about mixing up adolescent nostalgia, contemporary millennial malaise, and the daunting near future — Civilisation I blows up that timeline to cover the ancient past of primitive man, the large-scale situation facing humanity in 2019, and the distant future - when humans have been wiped from the face of Earth.

“Battle Lines” imagines Lao Tzu's Art of War in a 21st Century context, taking that tone (war as deception) and placing it in today's world of misinformation amidst political division, et al. “When The Fires Come” tells the story of the wildfires heralding climate change around the world like a fable written from a strangely fatalist perspective; the song's uncanny acceptance of our destruction is designed to be more disturbing than your standard call-to-action. “The River” details a flood apocalypse prophecy, invoking Biblical imagery and acting as something of a companion to “When The Fires Come” ("the longer the drought/the heavier the clouds”).

From their inception Kero Kero Bonito has always been focused on creating a dream vision of pop music — acknowledging its deep history while challenging the status quo. While they’ve explored nostalgic rock, kitsch pop and psychedelic experimentalism, their trademarks — subversion, idealism, craftsmanship — are ever-present on Civilization I.