Lucy Fitzgerald 
Q: So first off, whose idea was it to release an album through a phone number? That’s such a wild and unexpected concept.
A: It was mine(Rob). When ever we’d jam I noticed we had this slow building liminal kind of quality that reminded me of creepy/uncanny hold music. I think the original idea was to pitch the music to a bunch of businesses as hold music, which we may still do, but eventually I thought it would be cool to drop an album as a hold sequence.
Q: When you started trading ideas back and forth during that winter, did you already know Please Hold was going to be this strange “on-hold” world, or did it just evolve that way?
A: We knew it would have dark moments, but it did truly keep revealing layers of meaning and form. It still is. A friend of mine refused to call the number because they were worried someone might pick up, which gives it this analog horror feel to it I truly love.
But generally we did have a road map of how to tie the concept together.
Q: There’s a lot of personality in the textures, from static to operators to fake dial tones. How did you decide which “on-hold” moments to build into the record?
A: We had a few Skits in mind to propel the project forward, not everything made it. The phone version of the album is 15 minutes shorter than the hard copy version because we couldn’t technically fit everything on the hold sequence. I(Rob) also had an alternate ending featuring a Charlie Kaufman passage about death, but Jesse felt it was too bleak.
Q: You two seem to love making music that isn’t necessarily comfortable. Do you consciously push against the idea of making something catchy, or does that just happen naturally when you’re creating?
A: I listen to an embarrassing amount of pop music, I pine for the days as a kid when my ego wasn’t so wrapped up in music, obviously we are drawn to subversion in music cause we listen to a lot of music of all kinds and want to put our spin on it, also we live in a swanky tourist town where the culture goes out of its way to make people comfortable. It’s like living in a catalog or something, so I think there is a proclivity to act against the aforementioned culture.
Q: “Bubbles (not a SOAD cover)” has such a weird calmness to it, especially considering the story behind it. How did that personal story shape the mood or direction of that track?
A: The memory attached to that song came after its creation, I was making those last minute adjustments in the mix when the memory came back to me of my step father telling me about the time he had drowned as a boy and how when he finally gave in and took his first breath of water he felt a deep and total comfort, both physically and mentally.
I am a care aide by day and seeing how badly people long for death in their twilight years is this beautiful gift. We spend our whole life fighting to survive,afraid to die. It’s so nice to know the last moments might be a relief in the end.
Q: Jesse, “Quinze” is in 15/8. That’s a rare time signature. Do you both get deep into technical stuff like that, or does it just come out of experimenting?
A: We both love nerdy technical stuff when it comes to music. We have been deep diving into odd timing signatures since then, but it always has to be in service to the greater narrative of the band and more importantly the music. The narrative being a subversion of some kind, the 15/8 sounds odd but it’s musical and the chorus drops into a standard 4/4.
Q: There’s a strong undercurrent of death and mortality in the album, but it’s mixed with humor and moments of calm. How do you find that balance between the dark and the playful?
A: truth bedrock seems to be a paradox to me. Darkness only casts a shadow with the presence of light. How the dissociative state of a deep depression can feel as calm as a meditative flow state. How we can use the repetitive centrifugal force of habit/ritual to improve ourselves or destroy ourselves ei: addiction to drugs, alcohol, garbage food or devotion to exercise, a creative skill, mindfulness. It all relies on repetition even though they do opposite things.
Playing with your fears and seeing the paradox inherent in them is the only way to integrate your fears. I think Jung points to this as an example of intagrating the shadow.
Q: The way Please Hold shifts between lo-fi comfort and unsettling moments feels almost cinematic. Were you thinking about it like a story when putting the tracklist together?
A: I think movies and literature are as big of an influence on our work as any music we listen to. We are constantly talking about books and movies we love. When we are on the road and we lose cell service in the mountains Jesse has been reading passages of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”. I don’t get how he doesn’t get car sick…
Q: The record sits somewhere between ambient, industrial, and psychedelic sounds. Do you think about genre while you’re writing, or does that only come into play afterward?
A: with Electronic music you let the hardware/software guide you, you just choose what inspires you. I only think about genre or meaning after something is created. When I/we are creating something we are usually too deep in a flow state to care what genre it is. Ultimately genre is a marketing tool and creativity in marketing art is way later in the process of presenting the art.
Our lives would be so much simpler if we stayed in one lane but that would get in the way of the creativity which is paramount.
Q: Now that Please Hold is out in the world, what’s next for The Cavernous for the rest of the year? Are you planning more experiments, live shows, or something completely different?
A: currently we are finishing a batch of shows in support of “Please Hold”, our last show is November 7th in Vancouver at Lana Lou’s.
December we will be dropping a re-imaging of “the 12 days of Christmas” a long with a video synth rendition of the classic “yule log” as an extension of our first LP “A Very Cavernous Christmas”. Its a 13 minute ambient peice featuring: Stephen Hamm: The Theremin Man and audio/visual artist Chris Langer.
In the spring of 2026 we are poised to drop Volume 1of a Trilogy of new EP’s tentatively titled:
The Amaranthine Trilogy
Volume 1: (Un)broken Circles
Listening to songs so you don’t have to! Just kidding :D, you totally should. Music blogger by day, nurse by night
