Cinema, possibly my favourite of the tracks, stands at a puny 2:06 run-time with just 1 verse from Sarah. I feel there is potential for a lot of growth here, not only with the sonic style they wear on this EP overall, but the specific songs on here aren’t explored to their fullest potential. While I can confidently say I love each song presented to me, it doesn’t add up to that much. Standing just at 11 minutes this is just too short to really get into a groove with this album. This is a step in a different direction for KKB and I hope these ideas are not just left at this one EP. It reminds me a lot of the softer side of 80’s new wave, calling back to the days of Tears for Fears and The Pet Shop Boys. This feels like KKB trying to give their music more of a traditional ‘dim the lights’ type of atmosphere. Sarah’s fuzzy vocals being paired to the spacey synth keys are definitely a winning combo.

It presents an undeniably warm nostalgic feeling. This track can probably be considered the most “KKB” of the four as it’s easily the cutest on the album. My point is, I’m like 90% sure that this song is what’s playing in the background of all of that. It’s entirely in Korean so I have very little idea what the characters are talking about, but judging from the pictures it appears to be some type of romance story. They mostly feature low-quality photos of real life actors with text scrolling across the bottom of the screen. In the lectures for my Television Studies course there’s a girl who sits two rows in front of me and spends the whole class playing visual novels on her laptop. Then when they finally hit the first verse the robots start tapping their feet and the funny cartoon villain screams out “No! This can’t be happening! They’re having fun!” Then Sarah, Gus, and Jamie get carried away by an army of happy jammin’ robots.įriendship always wins guys, remember that. I feel maybe they’d be fighting off an army of robots that want to stop us from dancing, so they have to find some huge speakers for them to play this song and pierce their cold metal hearts. If KKB guest starred in an early 2000’s cartoon show, this is the song they’d play at the end of the episode, and quite frankly I want to see what wacky adventures the band gets our protagonists into. You Know How It Is seems to be the trio’s tribute to 2000’s pop punk and indie music, complete with fuzzy guitars and a remarkably lax vocal performance from Sarah. Any elements of indie rock from ‘Only Acting’ are amped up to 11 for this song. The guitars are back again on this track. It almost feels like a musical re-telling of Doki Doki Literature Club, and I hate that I can say that and still love it. On top of that, we get noisy hellish screams of the damned that bring a weird sense of narrative to the song. The fuzzy guitars brought in on the chorus usher in a new flavour to KKB’s sound, and it sounds fantastic. Then WHAM! Gotcha! You’re listening to indie rock. ONLY ACTINGĪside from the echo-y effect on Sarah’s voice this song starts out just like any normal Kero Kero Bonito song. It’s a slow burner definitely, and takes its time reaching a real payoff. This song curve-balls the fans with a minor key, cold synths, and a bass line straight out of a cave level from Pokémon. The EP, released late last February, consists of four new bangers for us to enjoy.Īlready, your average KKB listener will notice how different the tone of this track is to their usual fun, poppy affair. UK-based electronic band and real life anime Kero Kero Bonito has made their official return with TOTEP.

(This piece was originally written by Alex Mitro on March 15th, 2018 on our old host website, Medium)

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