We spoke with The Cavernous about “Something Special” and more!

Q: Hi! For people just discovering The Cavernous through “Something Special”,what do you hope they feel before they even start figuring out what the song means?

A: with any music we release, the hope is that people feel anything at all, even distain would be welcome. Some of my favourite musical experiences start with distain. The only thing I hope people don’t feel is indifference. I think artist create in the spirit of provoking someone.

Q: This track has that slow-build tension and then really opens up. When you were making it, did it arrive naturally like that, or did you have to really shape the journey of it?

A: most of our music starts with improvising together and seeing what excites us, the improvisation we started with for “Something Special” and the end result are almost unrecognizable.

 I think we are reaching for new ground in our song writing, before this group of songs we were vibing on repetition and textures, now we are leaning more into progression and contrast.

Q: You’ve got this mix of heavy electronics, psychedelia, and something really human and imperfect underneath it all. What is it about that contrast that keeps pulling you back in?

A: To me, contrast is one of the core functions of art and human expression, putting loud beside quite, white beside black, salty beside sweet. Contrast is a primary function of the human operating system. It is what creates depth within perception.

Q: The lyrics feel like they’re wrestling with change, repetition, and that weird cycle of everyday existence. Was there a specific moment or headspace that sparked “Something Special”?

A: my whole life I have experienced this strange feeling of truth being a paradox, like a lot of truth is two different things happening at once. 

I am a care aide by day and work with people that are experiencing there final months of life. Strangely most people in this time of there life are loooking forward to death, Its funny we live our whole lives afraid of death, until those twilight years then by the end of a long life we are often begging to die. I don’t know if this is really a paradox but its strange to me…

Q: There are lines in the song that feel surreal but also emotionally direct at the same time. When you’re writing lyrics like these, are you trying to tell a clear story, or are you more interested in creating a feeling people can fall into?

A: This group of songs I write first and ask myself what it means later, the words have to fit the emotion of the song first, then later I can assign my own meaning. If I try to write something too specific or organized it ends up sounding typical or forced.

Q: This is the first time you’re introducing vocals and lyricism in this project. What did adding your voices unlock for you creatively that maybe instrumentals couldn’t quite do before?

A: the history of electronic music is the history of humanizing the machine. To me its a physical form of personifying Inanimate objects, putting a human voice on top of electronics makes humanizing this sound so much easier.

Q: I’m curious how you two work together in the room. When a song like this starts taking shape, who’s usually pushing the chaos, and who’s making sure it all holds together?

A: Jesse might seem like the straight man and in some ways he is, but he often only gets excited if something is kind of odd or has a voice of its own. 

Q: Your music has this hypnotic quality, but there’s also a real sense of tension and release in it. Do you think more like sound designers, live performers, or storytellers when you’re building a track?

A: these songs from our up and coming album are built for live performance. Where as the music from our last project “please hold”, where we built a concept around releasing an album of hold music via calling a telephone number we were more in line with sound design. I guess it depends on the project.

Q: The phrase “typical yet strange” really sticks with me, because it feels like it says a lot about modern life in just a few words. Do you find yourselves pulling a lot from everyday repetition and turning it into something more surreal?

A: that is interesting you read the lyrics that way, like a modern thing, I think there is totally room for that interpretation for sure. To me that line feeds in to that paradox or maybe contradiction found in truth like “what is typical/normal”? To me the lines that point to modernity are “Blissfully enraged, idly engaged, the quiet calming squall, the promised silence falls”. This unconscious state of always reaching for our phones for the comfort of distraction only to fall prey to ragey-click bait, it does the opposite of comforting us.

But as I said your interpretation is as valid as mine as I write first and ask questions later, so I can’t be sure what these lyrics truly mean, they are just meant to sound cool in context of the song. If that makes sense.

Q: This is also the lead-in to a bigger release. Does “Something Special” feel like a doorway into the rest of the EP, or is it more of a standalone statement that sets the tone without giving everything away?

A: The Amaranthine Trilogy will consist of three EPs all pointing to the paradox or conditions found in truth. Volume One: Unbroken Circles points to how we can use the centrifugal force of the natural cycles of living to create or destroy, to grow or decay. 

I have dabbled in meditation for many years, I did two, 10 day silent meditation retreats, I have read a bunch on it and practiced it off and on through the years. Curiously I have reached a state in my practice numerous times that feels reminiscent of a numb/dissociative state that I have only felt in the darkest most depressive state I have ever experienced. There is deep comfort in both states but they were reached in completely different ways.

Another example is this; I have been sober for 10 years, as an addict I would fixate on the substances I wanted and this would come at a cost to my own mental health. I would replay the same soothing dysfunctional patterns over and over again falling deeper into my own self destruction. When I sobered up I used that same power of hyper fixation to improve my life, becoming addicted to self improvement. Two vastly different paths with the same force behind it. 

We are tiny glimpses of life, riding in endless cycles much larger than ourselves, somehow we harness the power to consciously or unconsciously use these forces.

Q: Since this is already your seventh release, how do you feel the project has evolved to get to this point? Does this chapter feel like a natural progression, or like you’ve hit a totally new lane?

A: We have been playing these songs for years at this point, it is nice to finally point to something that represents what we do live.

Q: Looking at the rest of 2026, what’s next for The Cavernous after this single — more videos, more live shows, more music, or maybe something people wouldn’t expect?

A: WE ARE TAKING THE SUMMER OFF! we have released an EP and an LP within 9 months of each other and played alot of great shows in support of them. WE NEED A BREAK! LOL, but we will be playing a bunch of shows in the fall, is it any surprise we get booked alot around Halloween? Lol. This winter will be writing and pre-production for Volume ll: Squalid Anthems.