Kero Kero Bonito: "This generation is being spoken about the most but listened to the least"

Gus Lobban, one third of London-based electronic-pop trio Kero Kero Bonito, is addressing the state of the country post-Brexit. “That’s the most important thing right now: forming bands and singing songs - actually saying shit.

“Don’t just sit around watching Facebook, scrolling through the same shit your mate posted two days ago. What the fuck is going on?!” the producer continues, sounding genuinely impassioned and somewhat concerned.

Gus and KKB’s second producer Jamie Bulled have been friends since school days. Growing up together in the suburbs of South London, they’ve been in various incarnations of “weird and slightly successful bands,” Jamie chips in, from their London studio. Realising they wanted to do something new and work with “someone cool”, the pair put an advert up on MixB - an online bulletin board for Japanese expatriates.

Sarah Midori Perry, now the band’s vocalist, responded to it and the three of them met up in early 2013 - and the rest is history. While spending time in an art studio painting and “drawing on toiler paper,” as well as playing saxophone outside of it, the Japanese singer saw the ad for the band and “just went for it. Something made me want to apply and I guess now it’s meant to be. It was fate…”

Together, Kero Kero Bonito make futuristic pop that’s seen them play shows all over the world. Taking their name from the onomatopoeic Japanese words for frog croaks and a “Bonito” type of fish, they fuse J-pop and video game music to create undeniably catchy tunes: they describe ‘Flamingo’ as body-positive cartoon flute R&B and ‘Sick Beat’ as gamer girl power rap bass.

Confessing that their musical influences are all over the place, Jamie cites early-2000 British pop music before Gus - who has released with PC Music as Kane West - recalls some favourites. “We love everything in that lineage, from Richard X to The Neptunes, Timbaland to Teddy Riley and Nile Rodgers.”