News

The Last Dinosaur Release Album

• 4th Mar 2010

There’s something a bit old-fashioned about Jamie Cameron and Luke Hayden, aka The Last Dinosaur. After all, the Essex- based duo – which expands to a band when they play live – is named after an extinct species. And despite being a) in a rock band and b) in their early twenties, both Jamie and Luke live in the countryside.

Most astonishingly of all, they don’t use any kind of computer technology to record their music – something that is almost unheard of in this day and age. “It’s all done on multi-track equipment and some microphones,” says lead singer Jamie, who has stuck with a trusty multi-track recorder ever since his teens. “Partly because I sort of like that it requires more effort,” he says, “Partly because change scares me, and partly because I imagine a less ‘warm’ sound is achieved using computer equipment.”

Luckily, nostalgia suits The Last Dinosaur, and there’s a suitably misty-eyed, pastoral atmosphere to their debut album, Hooray! For Happiness, (released 19th April 2010) which was mastered by John Golden (Sonic Youth, My Morning Jacket,Devendra Banhart) and is being released by Madrid-based label Dearstereofan. “We live in the country in Essex, which is my main source of inspiration and influence… clichéd but true,” says Jamie. “The woods, the fields, the windmill, the horses, the deer… Lyrically, I write about whatever I’m over-thinking at the time.” In its downbeat, introspective gentleness, the album defies its giddy title, and is impossible to pin down – ranging from propulsive almost-instrumentals, like album opener “Every Second is a Second Chance”, to the melancholy chamber-pop of “Maps”. And there are some tracks – like recent single “Home”, a seven-minute, multi layered epic – which defy any sort of label.

The band’s influences are suitably disparate – they count Mount Eerie, Broken Social Scene, Rachel’s and Max Richter among their favourites – but perhaps The Last Dinosaur’s aesthetic is best summarised by their devotion to Talk Talk, the Eighties synth-pop stars-turned-post-rock innovators. In other words, experimentation is the key. “I very rarely know how a song will end up when I start it, but then that’s the most exciting part,” says Jamie. “The songs either begin as a little idea, which we then flesh out, or as a loop that gets layered onto.”

Their lack of musical foresight has paid off. Cocteau Twin and Bella Union label boss Simon Raymonde is already a fan, while John Sakamoto of The Toronto Star was equally enthused, describing them as “warm and confident and ‘jazzy’ in the way that, say, Radiohead could be said to be jazzy, i.e. by their determination not to be confined by pop’s rigid melodic structure.” The Souls on Tape website put it best when they said, “Listening to The Last Dinosaur is like reverting back to a faraway childhood, full of innocence and soft-light pictures that cling to the memories of safety and comfort”.