Kero Kero Bonito is the name of a pop and rock dance group with its origins traced to London, United Kingdom. The three-man band is made up of friends Gus Lobban and Jamie Bulled, music producers and multi-instrumentalists. The other member of the band, who is also the lead vocalist, is Japanese-English singer Sarah Bonito. Kero Kero Bonito started making music as a group in 2011 and has grown steadily, gaining in relevance over the years. The band were among those selected to perform at Coachella 2019. We take a look at the band’s formation, their accomplishments, plus other interesting facts.
Kero Kero Bonito – Biography
Kero Kero Bonito is an idea of Gus Lobban and Jamie Bulled, two friends born in November 1992 in London and raised in the suburbs. They attended school together and their passion for music brought them together as friends. Both instrumentalists and sound engineers, the two started making music together and knew from school that they only wanted to make music.
Looking for a singer of Japanese descent, Lobban and Bulled used MixB to search for someone and that the latter would become Sarah Midori Perry. Perry was born in Japan on March 4, 1991 but spent 13 years in her hometown of Hokkaido, Japan, before her parents moved to the UK. She had been frequenting the MixB platform since 2012 and it became a useful tool to help her quickly adapt to English culture.
The time Lobban and Bulled released their search for a singer on MixB coincided with a time in Perry’s life when she was looking for something more. She was in her final year at Kingston University London where she was studying for a BA in Fine Art. Sarah was among the publicity’s first responders and Loban and Bulled loved her immediately.
Perry’s early experiences in professional music as a member of a girl band were very helpful for Lobban and Bulled who had none. In August 2014, Kero Kero Bonito had released his first mixtape Intro Bonito under Double Denim Records. A month later, in September 2014, they contributed to “ shh #ffb6c1 ” EP released by Canadian DJ Ryan Hemsworth.
About a year after releasing their debut record, Kero Kero Bonito embarked on their first US tour in August 2015. After gathering much-needed traction, the band released their debut studio album in October 2016. Bonito Generation has been very successful.
Kero Kero Bonito is known for incorporating melodies from video games into his music. They had a busy 2018, releasing their second album, Hour ‘n’ Place and their third EP, TOTEP
Family
Members of Kero Kero Bonito have been very tight-lipped about details about their families. For Lobban and Bulled, nothing else has been publicly known other than the fact that they grew up in suburban London. For Sarah Perry, better known by her stage name Sarah Bonito, her Japanese roots may be the only publicly known information about her heritage.
Facts About Musicians
• Kero Kero Bonito intentionally makes his stage name ambiguous. The name refers to many things, including the onomatopoeic words for croaking frogs, the Brazilian bird quero-quero, a type of fish, as well as the Portuguese translation for “I want, I want, Beautiful.”
• Sarah Bonito played saxophone in middle school for her school jazz band.
• Sarah, in 2019, started a different career as a DJ. She is a DJ under the pseudonym of DJ Cryalot.
• In addition to music, Sarah Bonito is very passionate about the arts, which is one of the reasons why Gus Lobban & Jamie Bulled chose her to be their singer. Some of his works on visual arts are scattered on his social media pages.
• Bonito Gus Lobban and Jamie Bulled have a side musical projects in addition to Kero Kero Bonito. Lobban releases his own music under the name Kane West, while Bulled, a former Kabogaeries bandmate, records his own music under the moniker Wharfwhit.
• During the concerts, Kero Kero Bonito includes Jennifer Walton on drums and James Rowland on guitar.
• their album Heure ‘n’ Place inspired by events in their private lives, notably the demolition of Sarah’s childhood home in Japan.