Civilisation

Civilisation is the name Kero Kero Bonito gave to a two-part project about how people cope when the world looks unsteady. It gathers Civilisation I (2019) and Civilisation II (2021), plus one bonus track, into a single compilation released in September 2021.^[1][7] For a group once known mainly for bright, bilingual, bubblegum pop, it is a striking pivot, though one that grows naturally out of what came before.

From personal dread to the wider world

The first EP arrived as a surprise in late September 2019, timed around a North American tour.^[4] Critics noticed immediately that the scale had changed. The group's previous album, Time 'n' Place, dealt with existential unease on a personal level. Civilisation I zoomed out to consider society and the environment as a whole.^[4]

Coverage from the period tied it to the climate anxiety of the moment, an era in which teenage activists were publicly pleading with adults to take the planet's condition seriously.^[5] The lead single, "Battle Lines," was read as a story about a corrupt government holding a population in its grip and about the need to resist.^[6] The sound stayed danceable and synth-driven, which is part of the point. The band delivers bad news in a form that makes you want to move.

Three tenses, one idea

The sequel gives the project its clearest shape. Each of its three tracks lives in a different tense: past, present, and future.^[1][2][3] The band described the EPs as an exploration of instinctive human tendencies, and that phrasing is a useful key to the whole set.^[1] The recurring question is what people do by reflex when threatened: tell stories, cling to routine, or imagine an escape.

The past is a fable. The opening track follows a young explorer who is captured and then revered, and the listener is left to guess how things end for her.^[6] The band has said they drew on narrative art such as the Bayeux Tapestry and Trajan's Column, forms that compress history into a sequence of pictures.^[6] That choice makes sense for a record about storytelling as a survival tool.

The present is a diary. The middle track recounts a single day of early pandemic life, with its small routines and its borrowed hope that normality might return.^[2][6] It is the quietest moment of the project, and Sarah Midori Perry's soft delivery gives it an almost lullaby calm. Reviewers heard it as a gentle bridge between the fantastical opener and the grand finale.^[3]

The future is a prophecy. The closing track, "Well Rested," stretches past the seven-minute mark and takes up resurrection, moral ambiguity, and overpopulation in the manner of a rave anthem.^[2][3] Where the opener looks backward and the diary looks inward, this one looks far ahead, to a humanity reshaped by environmental collapse and technology.^[1]

Bright surfaces, heavy subjects

What holds all of this together is a consistent contrast between how the music sounds and what it contemplates. NME's Ben Jolley argued that the group wraps weighty ideas such as isolation, mortality, and apocalypse in fun, colourful pop, so much so that impending doom starts to sound appealing.^[2] That tension is the band's signature move. It echoes earlier pop traditions in which cheerfulness works as camouflage, and it keeps the project from sliding into sermon.

It also suits the subject. Few people experience collapse as a single dramatic event. They experience it in the background of ordinary days, while the kettle boils and the news plays. Music that is playful and apocalyptic at once captures that double exposure better than a solemn record could.

There is also a practical story behind the split. The first EP was originally planned as four tracks, was trimmed to three, and the remaining ideas fed a second project, while the pandemic pushed the sequel from 2020 into 2021.^[1] The delay arguably helped. By the time it appeared, its themes of isolation and uncertain recovery were no longer speculative, and the diary at its centre had become a shared experience rather than a private one.

Vintage tools, futuristic ideas

The production is its own kind of commentary. The second EP was made with a Korg DSS-1 sampler and a collection of vintage synthesizers.^[1] The band said it was devised entirely on vintage hardware, and Flood noted that it was made in Gus Lobban's bedroom.^[1][3] There is a pleasing irony in using technology from decades past to imagine the far future. The sounds carry a nostalgic, 8-bit-adjacent glow even when the ideas turn grim, which echoes the way the project keeps folding history, present, and future into one frame.^[2]

Jolley described the trio as early hyperpop pioneers whose work still sounds futuristic, and the vintage palette complicates that claim in an interesting way.^[2] The future here is assembled from old parts.

Reception and standing

Civilisation II was received warmly. Metacritic recorded a score of 82 out of 100 from five critics, which it labelled universal acclaim, and Pitchfork gave it 7.5 out of 10.^[1] Flood awarded 7 out of 10 and compared the EP to a return to dancing among strangers after months of isolation.^[3] Under the Radar and other outlets also responded favourably.^[6] A dissenting note came from Riot, which found the second EP less cohesive than the first and its songs separate and unrelated.^[1]

That criticism points at a real feature of the structure. The three tenses do not form a continuous narrative, and the set works better as a triptych than as a story. Reading them as panels in a single tapestry, which seems to be the band's own intent, resolves most of the objection.

Why the compilation matters

Gathering the EPs into one release lets the arc read as a whole. The first EP supplies the anxious, outward-looking macro view, and the second supplies the human-scale response: fable, diary, prophecy.^[1][6][7] Together they sketch a portrait of a society telling itself stories to get through, a theme that has only become easier to recognise since.

For listeners who know Kero Kero Bonito from their earliest, cheeriest records, Civilisation is proof that the group's sweetness was never naive. It was a delivery method. The project asks what a civilisation does with its fears, and it answers with songs you can dance to, which may be the most honest answer available.