Words: Garrin Faturrahman
Photos: Nugie Rian

The first concert I ever watched was for Last Dinosaurs at the now-defunct Java Rockin’ Land 2013. I’ve recommended their songs endlessly to my friends (if not to impress a special friend of mine back in middle school). The riffs in “Honolulu” helped me connect with one of my best friends—we ended up having a band to this day. And as of recently, I’ve stuck their stickers on my parent’s car and on my laptop.

To say they’ve been with me since the day I found out how much music can mean in one’s life would probably be an understatement. But judging by the climate in Joyland Festival, maybe such a claim wouldn’t be too far off as I believe most were there to reminisce on the better days where the band’s then-new sounds played a big part in their lives.

Last Dinosaurs were included in Joyland Festival Jakarta 2023’s gutsy lineup: one can even see it as an indie sleaze revival of sorts that would look right at home as a reblog in someone else’s Tumblr home page. Such a concept of nostalgia-fueled get-together is honest down to the very floors of the venue—from chatting with someone new who enthusiastically reminded me about their secret 2012 show in Bali, to reconnecting with a friend from middle school who remarked how he wouldn’t have known of this band if it weren’t for our interaction back then. Heck, even our photographer and I bonded over Last Dinosaurs!

With that out of the way, Joyland Festival gave us the chance to have a brief chat with Last Dinosaurs, where we get a quick look on their songwriting process, their outlook on the changes in the indie rock musicscape, and one where I get to disprove the expression that is “never meet your heroes.”

I’d like to ask a lifelong question first: Was the band’s name inspired by The Pillows’ song, “LAST DINOSAUR”?

Sean: Yea. It was just me and Dan Koyama in the band at the time—we didn’t have a band, but we just had a band, and uh, we had a band before we had a band—and we were just tossing out ideas, and he said: “Last Dinosaurs,” and I just thought it was funny.

Sean: The craziest thing is that, our Japanese names, slammed together, mean “Dinosaur”, Kyōryū. That’s a coincidence.

Adding to that assumption, I too hear some resemblance from you guys to The Pillows, more so in your EP, “Back from the Dead”. What’s the story behind this direction in looking towards the Japanese music scene?

Sean: Not gonna lie, I don’t really know any of their music. I think I heard a couple of their songs?

Sean: Yeah, I don’t know. We don’t really have much of a Japanese thing going on. The only thing that was brought up was, like, Studio Ghibli, so, Joe Hisaishi. He’s programmed that melancholy into us.

Your first gig in Jakarta was all the way back in 2013 for Java Rockin Land… 

Sean: Yeah! That’s the one!

With you covering, The Cure, was it?

Sean: Didn’t we play  “Just Like Heaven”?

Lachlan: *nods* “Just Like Heaven.”

Sean: Shit… And Sugar Ray played as well! That’s weird. I remembered that gig.

Fast forward 10 years later to today, has anything changed in how you deliver music?

Sean: Yeah, we, um… we have walked on… we have wheeled on these days, and we have, like, a hoist system.

[All laughing]

Sean: No, no. It’s just we’re less stupid these days. We were just idiots back then. And, now we’re really proud of the shows that we’ve put on these days. Like, after the pandemic, we toured with this band called Bad Suns from America, and they’ve really opened our eyes to a new level of live performance. Since that tour we’ve really tried to step up, and we really enjoy just playing the best that we possibly can.

Sean: ‘Cause it’s different, you know? It’s like, they’re playing on a level that was so tight it was magical, and the crowd was just going nuts because of… like, you just get lost with just how amazing it was.

With your newest release, RYU, and since said tour with Bad Suns, do you have new ways of making music?

Sean: No. Honestly, I wish there was, but… It’s just natural. Just play guitars as much as possible, always thinking about different things, just thinking about melodies constantly, just recording them on your phone.

Sean: But uh, no… Bad Suns, like, I even talked to them about it, like, didn’t really influence the music, but thought about them a lot when we were recording. Did definitely add a lot more live drums in the album, because we kinda been missing that? We’ve programmed everything, sometimes even the bass is programmed.

Sean: We did change the method just a little bit with a couple of people, but yeah, one of the biggest things, which is kind of strange, is recording the drums at the very very end: after everything is finished, then we do the drums. That was an interesting new thing for us, which made a huge difference, I think.

I read (and watched) that Sean does custom pedals and guitars for himself. What do you see in the pursuit of “personalized” sounds?

Sean: I don’t know, it’s just… I just got an idea of what I wanted to sound like, and I just keep going until it’s there—it’s definitely there now, just took 10 years or something like that. Spent a lot of money on that guitar, ‘cause like I bought it, sold it, bought it back, customized it, drove over it, snapped it in half, got it glued it back together, and then I customized it.

Lachlan: He sawed that in half…

Sean: And I’m gonna smash it tonight.

[He did not]

With you being one of the breakthrough artists from those days of In a Million Years, have you noticed any changes in the indie rock music landscape?

Sean: Yeah, it changes every two years, I would say. Like, with the way the business works, like, the streaming. When we started it was iTunes, and we watched iTunes disappear. Like, we were just at the end of CDs. It was crazy. And then no more CDs, iTunes. And then, iTunes went down, Spotify. Now, there’s so many different streaming platforms it’s hard to tell what’s happening now. And then there’s social media as well. We grew up in the days of, like, The Strokes. We loved that.

I can see that.

Sean: Yeah. It changed a lot. It’s a lot more immediate now, too. But for us, when we started, it just felt accidental. We’re just being ourselves, and then it organically reaches people. Now, it’s like, you load up a gun and shoot it around and be like “guys, we got music.”

Sloane: Then you really have to market it yourself, so much more. It was literally at the end of Myspace back then. It’s like, Myspace, then in the middle of early-ish Facebook times—bands weren’t really on Facebook, I feel like? But, like, Dinos was more on Myspace.

It’s a lot more immediate now, too. But for us, when we started, it just felt accidental.

I read that your song, “Apollo” was based on melodies from a remix that you found in Tokyo clubs. What made the call for you to base the song on that random tune?

Lachlan: It’s based on one tofubeats song that we were listening to a lot after that Japan trip. I remember the day that that song got made, that song very much came in and swooped up the melodic idea, for sure. “Don’t Stop The Music” feat. Chisato Moritaka by tofubeats. Really good song.

What made the call for you to base the song on those melodies?

Sean: Oh, it’s just ‘cause, like, we were riding with JP, Jean-Paul Fung, and… we just had nothing. And then he went off to the shops, and there was just me and him, and I had these chords and I was like, “quick, quick, quick, let’s do something real quick before he’s back,”

Lachlan: Jazzed up really quickly.

Sean: Yeah, and I was like, “remember that song? [vocalizing ‘Don’t Stop The Music],” “what about like, [vocalizing the first four notes of ‘Apollo’], start with that!”

Sean: And then I went “Yeah,” into an iPad, “↑Yeah, ↓yeah, ↑yeah,” and because of the way it was compressed, it was like: “↑Er ↓er ↑er ↓er,” to back up that guitar sound, and then just laid down the bass, and then we came back into the studio, and I was like: “Check this out.”

Sloane: So funny. Aha.

Sean: And then I think we watched The Matrix again. I think we just recently watched The Matrix again?

Lachlan: Probably, yeah.

Sean: And I was, like, obsessed with the content of, like, just changing your life with a pill—the red and blue pill. So that’s what the song’s lyrics are actually about.

One last question: anything to say for aspiring musicians?

Sean: I would say just get as good as you can get, and just do stuff that makes you proud.

Lachlan: Don’t become a DJ. Don’t give up and become a DJ. Just grow a pair and keep going.

Sean: Yeah, ‘cause we did this simply by accident, so… we didn’t go and be “I’m gonna be a freakin’ musician,” we just like, we just play guitar, and we just wanted to get free beer. That’s basically how we started.

That should be all.

Sloane: Thanks for being a long time fan.

That would be my honor.