If Kero Kero Bonito’s most recent full-length, Time ‘n’ Place, was about mixing up adolescent nostalgia, contemporary millennial malaise, and the daunting near future, then 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 the Earth.
Civilisation I features Kero Kero Bonito’s most ambitious work yet via complex arrangements and their grandest song themes thus far. It demonstrates a return to electronic music after the indie rock exploration of Time ‘n’ Place, though retains shades of that album’s dusty patina via its use of obsolete music technology. The result is modernism hewn from lost technology, like a parallel universe that never existed, while showing off the band's skills as electronic musicians.
“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”).
Civilisation I was written, produced, and recorded by KKB in Gus’ room in the London borough of Bromley using hardware only. The artwork was made by Sarah etching a drawing of one of her designs onto copper.
From their inception, KKB 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.
