Last Dinosaurs talk about their latest AI inspired EP “RYU” and how they never try to limit themselves when it comes to creativity.
DECEMBER 13TH 2O23 | by MADISON NORTH
Photo by Andre Cois
Australian Indie Rock band Last Dinosaurs recently put out their latest EP RYU, and it’s unlike anything the band has done before, and in the best way. The dinos consist of brothers Lachlan and Sean Caseky along with Michael Sloane and are not afraid to step out of their comfort zone in the name of creativity. The band fully represents what it's like to not just be musicians, but to be people who fully immerse themselves in their art and craft.
We recently were lucky enough to talk with Sean Caskey about coming fresh off the Last Dinosaurs co-headlining tour with Vacations, their most recent EP “RYU”, and his jarring bright blue keyboard.
RAMBLE: You guys just came off your co-headlining tour with Vacations…How was that experience?
SEAN: It was awesome, it’s a bit sad cause I miss them a lot already cause we just had eleven housemates for two months in very close quarters…the sleeping area is like the size of a bedroom with like twelve people in it (laughing).
RAMBLE: It’s like summer camp.
SEAN: (laughing) Yeah, yeah pretty much, summer camp except the adult version and the beds are like constantly moving, which honestly once you get used to it is a really nice feeling and it’s a bit jarring when you don’t have that feeling. Like we stayed in a hotel in San Francisco cause the bus broke down and I couldn’t sleep, cause I had a big bed to myself, everything was white, cause the bunks are like completely black…But I miss it, aside from the sleeping aspect being on the bus with them, it was just really good being Australians, like our sense of humor just blended instantly, and they’re all super awesome guys and kind of nerdy as well and like to to play their games, and like Michael and Jasper and them would just play like the nerdiest computer games in the hotel lobbies and stuff.
RAMBLE: It was like a perfect fit.
SEAN: It was like a perfect fit actually, it’s funny when you tour with someone you start off and don’t know them at all and then you end up being really good friends, but with these guys even though we didn’t really know them we knew of them for a long time and yeah we just became really good friends straight away so, it was a pretty unique touring situation, especially because of the co-headlining thing as well and being on one bus made it pretty unique.
RAMBLE: Had you guys ever done a co-headlining tour before?
SEAN: Maybe like ages ago with another Australian band, just around Australia…That was just totally different though…This one was different cause obviously it’s America, there’s so many cities to play and the venues are pretty big, we’re just taking turns pretty much on the headline…There’s thirty two shows or something so it was easier to even it out with sixteen shows each.
RAMBLE: You guys also played at All Things Go Festival this year in Maryland, and in a couple days you’re going to Joyland in Indonesia and then you’re going to Very Festival in Thailand. What would you say this biggest difference is playing festivals versus headlining tours?
SEAN: When you headline in a venue you have control of the whole situation, you can be more prepared and you get to set everything up the way that you want it. Festivals are more like in-out and you just gotta hope that like you’ve got the right people there, give off good energy, doesn’t rain, sounds good. I definitely prefer headlining our own shows, festivals are a bit crazy, also it always feels like the first day of grade eight every single time…It’s fun though, especially when you finish playing and you get to hangout with people.
RAMBLE: So with Joyland and Very Festival, you guys are playing those basically one, you have a one day break in between, do you have time for your guys selves to explore or anything?
SEAN: No (laughing), not even in like America. Sometimes, mainly cause I’m lazy and tired, but sometimes the only part of the city I’ll see is the walk from the bus to the back of the venue and sometimes that’s like 20 yards, cause I’m a piece of shit (laughing), I’ll do the soundcheck and just lie there. Indonesia I really want to explore because we only always go Jakarta…It’s kind of like going to America and only going to LA and not realizing there’s the Grand Canyon, there’s the Redwoods, there’s Seattle, San Francisco, and then you go the middle and there’s so much more crazy stuff in the middle as well, and then the east coast, yeah I think Indonesia is a bit like that, there's a lot more to it than just Jakarta, so I would love to explore that place, and we know a few people there, a guy who’s done a lot of art and videos for us lives in a pretty small town to the west, which I’d love to see and eat the food and stuff. I think we’ll have a little more time in Bangkok to explore, which is a mad city as well.
RAMBLE: Last year you guys released your album “From Mexico With Love” and the ten year anniversary edition of “In A Million Years”, how long in between those two projects and then working on “RYU” did you guys have, or was it as soon as those were done you were working on it?
SEAN: Pretty much as soon as we were done we got cracking. We were pretty aimlessly going at it for a while there to be honest and it wasn’t until maybe, I don’t know, I guess like…Maybe 9 months ago I stumbled across this artwork by this guy Luke Nugent and at the time I was really interested in the AI visual art that was coming out and everyone was going nuts, panicking about AI, but I was getting into and finding like cool artists, and his artwork was just super, super powerful and I was just staring at it for ages just trying to figure out why is was so good and in it is these two guys, Asian looking dudes, looks like it’s the year 3000 and they’re holding these little tv monitor devices and suddenly I was just like ‘That little tv he’s holding, I want our album to sound like it’s coming out of that’, like what’s the sound that’s coming out of that crazy futuristic device, and then I told the guys about it and from thereon we just started pumping the songs out with that in mind and everyone I told when it came to mixing engineer, or producers and stuff I’d be like, ‘This is the concept, I want it to sound like it’s from a 1,000 years into the future, out of this tiny little tv’...It was really interesting to approach the music with that sort of perspective cause like at the end of the day I think all the music…It’s like 20% different cause of this treatment. But, it was kind of like easier to create a whole album with that in mind, like a full abstract concept, it wasn’t necessarily about love or any colors, or anything like that, it was just the future, semi-dystopian satellite, rocks casting, “ancient music”, which is today’s music…It came together really quickly to be honest, a lot quicker than I would have preferred, cause I just have to do it, finish it, and then stop and send it away, and it’s done and then we’re on tour, but I’m happy with way it came out in the end.
RAMBLE: What made you guys want to release “Afterlife” as this single that would show off this new era for the band?
SEAN: It was just the first song that was finished (laughing). That was the only song that was finished actually, and that was the first song that was created after the concept and I was like made that for the concept. Tried to make the guitar sound really robotic and not human and the lyrics are very non-human, like they don’t connect very well, it’s like a AI trying to relate to a human and then talking about the concept of heaven and not really understanding it…The reason was just that it was finished and feeling pretty good, that one was fun though cause I wrote that one here with an effect from a previous song from Yumeno Garden, on one of Lach’s songs, and I play lead guitar for his songs, everytime I use this effect I’m like, ‘I should totally use this for something else’ and I finally got to do that and we went to Melbourne and recorded most of it, and I went on tour and in Mexico City I did the vocals, so it was kind of done all over the place which we don’t normally do, we usually do it all in one spot so that was fun doing that one.
RAMBLE: I love the music video for it too, I think it’s this really cool 80’s like video game vibe to it. Where did the concept come from for that one?
SEAN: We were kind of struggling to figure out what to do cause we were in such a rush and then we hit up our friend in Indonesia, he’s the guy that lives out west…He’s a super talented kid, very, very shy dude but very clever at 3D stuff and yeah we hadn’t talked to him for a while or used his art for a while so our manager brought him up and it was cool to reach out to him again, he was super keen and we had some like vague ideas. We shot the stuff in Michael’s garage because we just needed a “greenscreen” and Yafi just did his magic, he barely speaks English so it was pretty miraculous that he knew what we were talking about (laughing)...He’s awesome, his names “hello.bluedays” on Instagram he’s worth checking out, he’s done a lot of stuff for different artists and his page is just really cool.
RAMBLE: I think that all the visuals you guys have for this EP in general are so cool, like from the manga artwork that you have, that you guys were giving away on Instagram and everything, and then the Transmissions video you posted for the EP dropping, and then like you were saying the EP cover. Everything just feels like a collective story, you’re not just putting out an EP with songs on it, it feels like a whole unit. Did you have all these visuals in mind or was it more so you had the EP artwork and went from there?
SEAN: Had the EP artwork and then just went from there, honestly it was all so quickly done. We’re just very fortunate to have some extremely talented friends. The guy that has done most of the visuals, so the Transmissions video, the “Elton” video, and the “Walking on Ice”, this guy called Tom Carroll, Egumei on Instagram, he just lives like a suburb away from me…Michael has known him basically since he was a tiny kid…It was suggested Tom and he just filmed us for the day in front of a greenscreen and we had really vague ideas on what to do and he just, we just told him like ‘go with your imagination but this is the brief’. I told him the whole story cause i had already written a “short story” thing for the concept so he just ran with it and created those extremely strong visuals and while we were on tour I was talking to him about that Transmissions video, we wanted like an explainer to it cause the story for the whole EP is so intense, it just can’t be explained in any other way it had to be like a little tiny movie, and so I wrote the three paragraphs of dialogue, sent it to him, and told him I would like some scientific stock footage and just include some of the art from some of the videos he’s already made. It’s also going to tie into some more stuff in the future, without giving away too much information, it’s more coming. We spent a lot of time thinking about this universe…It’s fifth album, it’s hard to come up with more original ideas that’s not just music and with our fans we really like to give them something to hold onto and like help get absorbed into the universe that we create, so we really wanted to go the extra mile with this concept, which I’m so glad we did cause we ended up making really good connections and good work with various other artists like Em Niwa, who’s done a lot of the merch and she’s doing a manga, this guy called Chris Yee, super talented guy from Sydney, he’s doing manga, and a guy from San Diego called Erick Carrada, he wrote a “short story”, we actually potentially got a book, some manga, I’m making a radio station as well for the satellite to be broadcasting, so just working on that and figuring out whether we're gonna host that or be like a background audio thing where it's got audio memos, demos, demos of the songs, songs that didn’t make it, just like heaps of stuff, just on one continuous lo-fi’d loop, going in and out of lo-fi as the satellite orbits the earth. We’ve just made so much stuff that I’m really excited to slowly trickle out for our fans to get lost in our universe.
RAMBLE: Would you say that this is your favorite era you guys have been in so far for the band?
SEAN: Creatively, yes definitely. It’s because music’s changed so much these days, we’ve been doing this for twelve or thirteen years, and when we started the industry was changing with streaming and iTunes and CD’s and records…It’s just changed more again, after COVID, like the way music comes out it’s just different so instead of trying to write any ways we’ve just decided to it our own way, because ultimately it doesn’t matter in the end it’s just gotta be fun and enjoyable, but yeah no definitely in terms of putting the thing out (laughing) this has been the best, cause usually I’m just so anxious and nervous that what we’re putting out isn’t good enough, this time I feel like it doesn’t matter because we’ve created something more than just a collection of songs, it’s like a bunch of songs with a strong feeling beneath it.
RAMBLE: I feel like…Artists when they put out things that they’re more proud of versus ‘Ok I’m putting this out, I like it, I know this is what people will like’ versus like ‘I like it, I don’t really care if other people like it’, that’s usually where the best art and music comes from, when you put out things that are so authentic to you.
SEAN: Yeah exactly. Actually the other thing with this, I feel like because of this “AI” excuse I found a reason to be able to put songs on to the EP that I wouldn’t have been able to do on any other album, like “dinos” album, like “Yin and Yang” for instance is like a two minute song and it sounds a little bit crazy, like one of those songs that would never make it on a normal dinos album but because it’s kind of like an interlude in between songs. I felt really stoked that I could do stuff like that, just in case there’s people out there that like that, cause the music I listen to generally sounds pretty strange and ugly, I like to find stuff that’s really cool, really beautiful, but also like the ugly stuff that’s really challenging to listen to sometimes, it strikes a cord like nothing else can, I feel like “Yin and Yang” is one of those songs. “Yin and Yang” was that one for me, my chance to break the mold a little bit.
RAMBLE: I like the way that you guys ended the EP with “Not From Here”, it’s more of an instrumental, melancholy song. It feels wondrous, like as I was listening to it, I felt like if I was watching a movie the song would be playing in the background if I was seeing the earth and the world for the very first time. Why did you guys decide to end the EP on that note?
SEAN: I made that song with zero intentions, to the degree where I made it on this keyboard that I bought and I was just stuffin around and I did it, I didn’t really finish it but I sort of bounced it out and then I deleted the session and then put it in the trash and sold the keyboard, I just fucked it off completely and then later on I was like ‘Wait that’s actually not that bad’. I was just going through everything that I had for like figuring out what was going on this, I was like ‘This actually might work’, and it’s kind of like the satellite has died, it’s battery has run out and it’s finally just like fading out and drifting into oblivion, and it’s kind of strange cause someone pointed out recently that the only other time we’ve had an instrumental was on our first album and it was called “Satellites” (laughing) and I completely forgot about that, so it kind of full circle that we’d done that, and it had to be the end as well. I like making stuff like that and it was all done, cause I can’t really play keyboard for shit but, I played it, I did it on purpose where it wasn’t in time or anything, all of the sounds on either side are like sort of sounds like a kid played it, but I wanted that like broken sound. But yeah, if you had heard the keyboard by itself, I’m shocked at how shitty, it was like a kids keyboard ya know, except it wasn’t a kids keyboard it was like the ultimate sixty year old mans church keyboard (laughing) and that’s exactly who I bought it off of and I sold it cause it was like this very bright blue and I just couldn’t handle it, I couldn’t stand looking at it, but I figured out it would sound good if I just touched the keys and go super light it would sound nice for some reason, I don’t know why. Yeah I’ll probably buy another one of those soon, it ended up being pretty good cause I made “Elton” with it as well and kind of regret getting rid of that thing.
RAMBLE: No more bright blue ones though.
SEAN: No, they come in black. The only reason I got the blue one cause it was like four hundred bucks, but the black ones like twelve hundred bucks.
RAMBLE: All because of the color?
SEAN: It must be. I got it second hand, but like no one was selling the black ones cause I guess people want to keep em (laughing).
RAMBLE: (laughing) They want their normal colored keyboards.
SEAN: I think that’s it. It was very jarring, seriously, it was very jarring. It looked so childish too cause of the color.
RAMBLE: (laughing) You’re like waking up in the middle of the night and the keyboard’s just there and you’re like ‘AH!’
SEAN: (laughing) Yeah.
RAMBLE: (laughing) Like a sleep paralysis demon.
SEAN: (laughing) Oh shit.
RAMBLE: (laughing) Alright, and then the last question I have for you is, as you said you guys have been releasing songs for twelve to thirteen years, how have you been able to find a balance between staying consistent with what makes you guys who you are versus how you’re able to know when to shake things up and you’re not afraid to change?
SEAN: It’s not the intention to be honest, we just do whatever, cause me and Lach just make some songs, he makes songs more often than me, but I make songs every couple of months or something. Yeah we just do whatever, I literally just have a bunch of full board EDM tracks, and like a full on Country track. We're just making anything, and then at the end we bring it together when we’ve got a collection that works together, and there’s no intention sonically on a change, it’s just like tention is found afterwards where it’s like ‘What is this, what are we doing here’. I can't imagine what it’s like to be like ‘Ya know what, we’re changing our style, we’re gonna be this, and we’re gonna make songs like this now’. The concept I made for this one was like it’s coming out of this device was about as far as we can go in terms of “changing our sound”. We’re always just being true to ourselves and only putting songs out that we feel fairly confident about and just hope like hell that people like them.
Listen to the interview on YouTube below.