The Cavernous: Please Hold
The Cavernous Dial Into Death and Dissonance With Phone-Only Concept Album “Please Hold”
by Jack Rush
In an era where music is almost too easy to access, The Cavernous—a heavy psychedelic electronic duo from Kelowna, BC—have done something brilliantly inconvenient: they've released their new concept album Please Hold exclusively via a toll-free phone number. No streaming links. No downloads. Just dial 1-877-420-9159, and you’ll be placed into a strange, immersive limbo of lo-fi textures, warped ambiance, and cryptic automated voices. Part art prank, part sonic séance, Please Hold is easily The Cavernous’ most unconventional—and perhaps most affecting—project to date.
A Surreal Experience You Call Into
Dropping July 28, 2025, Please Hold isn’t an album in the traditional sense. It’s a full-length narrative experience that unfolds over a surreal “hold sequence,” where listeners float through loops of ambient dread, off-kilter rhythm, and spoken-word dispatches from some uncanny digital afterlife. It’s both soothing and deeply unnerving, as if Brian Eno ghostwrote a call center menu for a haunted future.
While the full album lives only on the other end of the phone line, the lead single “Guile” will land on streaming platforms with an official video, offering a glimpse into the eerie landscape The Cavernous have constructed. True to its name, “Guile” is paranoid and shifting, weaving lush synth beds with jagged textures and creeping tension. It showcases the band’s talent for crafting beauty in dissonance.
A Meditation on Death, Made With a Banjo-Synth and Broken Loops
Created over the winter of 2022–23 through asynchronous collaboration, Please Hold is a sonic collage of grief, technology, and existential reflection. Rob McLaren focused on looping improvisations inspired by lo-fi comfort and the unsettling stillness of ambient music. Meanwhile, Jesse Barrette added rhythmic complexity and unpredictable sonic elements—think 15/8 time signatures, banjo-synth hybrids, glass bottle percussion, and distorted field recordings.
The emotional core of the album cuts deep. “Vitric,” written shortly after the death of McLaren’s cousin and closest childhood friend, sounds like a funeral procession inside a broken synthesizer. On “Lo-finite,” an automated voice breaks character to remind you, chillingly, that you too are “on borrowed time.”
“It started as a joke about hold music,” McLaren explains. “Then it became a meditation on death.”
Experimental, Heavy, and Unforgettably Human
Known for their genre-defying soundscapes and multimedia performances, The Cavernous blend elements of industrial, ambient, and psychedelic electronic music. Their sonic influences include HEALTH, Nine Inch Nails, and Mogwai’s electronic work, but their vision is singular: emotional maximalism through minimal means.
Past releases like Starlight, One Nail, and Siamese Spine Split showcased their willingness to blur boundaries. With Please Hold, they go even further—creating a nonlinear, immersive album that lives outside the digital grid, forcing you to slow down, pick up the phone, and just listen.
Final Thoughts: A Concept Album That Disrupts the Concept of an Album
Please Hold is a radical experiment in form and medium—a reminder that music can still be physical, ephemeral, even inconvenient. But it’s also deeply emotional: a quietly devastating exploration of mortality and meaning in the age of constant distraction. The flutes, drones, and dial tones may echo with irony, but the message hits with real sincerity.
The Cavernous don’t just want your ears—they want your time. And they know exactly what it’s worth.
Have a listen to Guile on our Rattler Choons Spotify playlist and connect with The Cavernous on social media:
