Kero Kero Bonito
There are some gigs that are so attractive that they draw me
to them like a shark to freshly chummed waters behind a fishing boat. Tonight
the bait is Kero Kero Bonito. I circle Electrowerkz a couple of times and swim
in.
The First Law of gig queues is in operation. This states
that a long line of punters outside inevitably means that when you get inside
there are no more than a few handfuls of people milling about.
The first act is on. And this is where I get way out of my
knowledge zone. Those who know more about this kind of thing should feel free
to make a derisory snort at anything I type from this point onwards.
On stage is a projection of a computer screen. It swarms
with code. There are various beeping noises that occasionally become off-kilter
beats. As the code is deleted or re-typed, so the sounds change.
This is the world of Lil Data, and it is as incomprehensible
to me as an airplane is to a goldfish.
The bleeps and bloops are easy enough to listen to, and the
small gaggle of guys (obviously!) who crowd around the console where Mr Data is
weaving his magic are wearing contented smiles. It’s all very Neuromancer – an
Eighties vision of the future.
Compared to Lil Data, the next performer, Bo En is normalcy
personified. Compared to anything else, he’s very unusual indeed.
Bo En stands smiling behind a bench of electronica, bathed
in a sickly fluorescent neon glow. He sings joyfully (and badly) along with
samples of ancient Japanese gaming machine themes or film scores, sometimes
duetting with squeaky disembodied hentai voices or crooning through a vocoder.
It’s simultaneously silly and clever, and hugely danceable.
The crowd leap around and marvel in recognition at various samples that are
chopped, diced and discarded in seconds.
So small is this scene (loosely affiliated around the ‘PCMusic’ label) that all the artists know and collaborate with each other.
Therefore when he deconstructs and rebuilds Kero Kero Bonito’s track ‘My
Party,’ this is greeted with whoops of delight even though it will form part of
their own set in less than an hour.
Almost uniquely for an electronic act, Bo En radiates warmth
and good humour. He’s genuinely funny. And his music is great too.
Kero Kero Bonito take tonight’s Japanophilia a stage
further. They’re a bouncy, gaudy sugar rush of kawaii. They’re extremely arch
and knowing, mimicking innocence and ditziness, but they do it in a loving and
celebratory way. There’s more than a hint of taking the mickey, but everything
is so shaken up like a soda bottle and played in good fun that all you can do
is chirp ‘Kero Kero’ and go along with it.
It’s not as if I’m in a position to decode the subtexts that
bubble beneath the bright colours and high pitched trills of anime and J-Pop
anyway.
The band are led by the permanently grinning Sarah Bonito, a
delighted and delightful singer who skips around the stage singing in a
childish voice. She is accompanied on beats by Gus and Jamie Bonito, who
occasionally pretend to be playing their equipment but are just as likely to be
doing silly dance routines or reading a book.
This is pop music and its purest and pinkest. There is a
sense of the absurd in all of this, particularly in the lyrics. In ‘Flamingo’
Sarah wonders about how many shrimps a bird must eat before it’s skin turns
pink. Or how babies are so strange.
There’s a lot of dressing up. Party hats for ‘My Party’, a
graduation robe for ‘Homework’ and a pile of boxes for ‘Build It Up’. At one
point Gus and Jamie don furry masks for a version of ‘Cat vs Dog’ that seems to
fall foul of a technical problem and is not actually played.
It’s impossible not to enjoy Kero Kero Bonito, but they are
rather like gorging on sugary sweets and its possible that there is not really
much here beyond the silliness.
But, on the other hand... seriousness is way overrated.
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