How Last Dinosaurs Found Their "Own Sound" In A Remote Japanese Studio

When it comes to recording, rather than go down the well-worn route of laying down their music somewhere local, or even in their own home studios, some bands like to completely immerse themselves in isolated and inspirational spaces. That’s exactly what Brisbane indie-pop outfit Last Dinosaurs did for the recording of their brand new record Yumeno Garden. Eschewing the conventional approaches, they packed up their fairly minimalist gear and headed to a small town in rural Japan called Arita to commit their tracks to tape. Frontman and rhythm guitarist Sean Caskey joins us from his home in Brisbane to fill us in on the reasoning behind seeking inspiration in this manner.

“We thought it was absolutely essential,” tells Caskey. “There’s just so many distractions these days, especially with phones being ever-present. And also, at times making music is such a laborious task, it’s so slow, and it’s just so easy to sit down and look at your phone and your Instagram and stuff. Sometimes you’ve just got to cut all that out.

“In that place we just had that pure isolation, it was just us.”

The need for isolation and immersion is understood, but why that particular destination, out of all the places they could have gone across the globe? “Well, there’s a studio there, and the town itself is really beautiful,” Caskey says. “Japan’s got this problem now where small country towns are being completely vacated, people are just going to the cities. But this particular town has just started having this resurgence of art coming back in. It’s the new hot spot to go to for artists because property’s so cheap, it’s really pretty and there’s this really solid community there.”

In addition to this, the studio itself was a major attraction. “There happens to be a really cool studio there, owned by a guy who, believe it or not, is a Doctor in art from Tokyo University,” he continues. “He plays in this noise rock band, and he’s really strange, but he’s a good guy and he’s got this great studio.

“It’s just a beautiful environment, his dad built the studio in this gigantic wood storage warehouse, and he has these two awesome studio speakers playing jazz and classical music 24/7, because they believe that the vibrations make the wood stronger.”

This strange and beautiful studio became far more than just a place to record their songs, it became part of the experience, a part of the album itself. “It smelt great, the Japanese pine,” Caskey recalls. “It was just nice to walk into the place, it was kind of eerie, there’s this classical music going at 2am, you go upstairs and it’s just this beautiful wooden studio, the vibe was just perfect for making music really.”

On top of the incredible experience of recording in such a place, the album is the culmination of a truly tumultuous and eventful three-year period in the life of the band and its individual members. It was a period that saw them make some major decisions about the immediate and longer-term future of Last Dinosaurs. “We were trying to figure everything out, business-wise,” says Caskey. “Also Dan [Koyama] the drummer, he was going through a really heavy time and he took a bit of a break.

“We had a big think about the way the band and the business is run. We eventually sorted that stuff out, and in the meantime we were just making tunes, and we slowly but surely figured out that this album had to be made by ourselves. We’ve worked with other people, but this time we knew we had to create ourselves, with our own sound. Authenticity is paramount, and we thought the best way to achieve that is to totally DIY it.”

Now they are applying that ethic to all facets of the band’s operation, not just the recording side of things. “I make the posters, I do some of the artwork and merchandise,” Caskey asserts. “Mike [Sloane] the bass player has done all our videos, we produce the music, we go and get our photos done, we’ve just decided that we need to be in the driver’s seat.”