Kelowna, BC - The Cavernous, a heavy psychedelic electronic duo from Kelowna, BC, are releasing their most unconventional project yet: Please Hold, a full-length concept album only accessible by calling a toll-free number. The album dropped July 28, 2025.
Dial 1-877-420-9159 and you won’t find a streaming link - you’ll be placed in a surreal hold sequence filled with lo-fi beats, ambient textures, dissonant soundscapes, and cryptic automated messages. It’s an experience equal parts soothing, uncanny, and existential.
While Please Hold is only available in full via phone, the lead single “Guile” will be released on major streaming platforms with an official video, offering a glimpse into the project’s eerie, immersive world. Built around a shifting tapestry of paranoia and tension, “Guile”showcases The Cavernous’ ability to blur the line between unsettling and sublime.
Known for their wall-of-synths setup and experimental ethos, The Cavernous (Rob McLaren and Jesse Barrette) draw sonic inspiration from HEALTH, Nine Inch Nails, and Mogwai’s electronic works. Please Hold pushes that further, weaving together washed-out electronica, eerie downtempo, and progressive synth odysseys into a nonlinear meditation on death, vulnerability, and the fractured calm of modern life.
Created over the winter of 2022–23, Please Hold was born out of asynchronous collaboration. McLaren leaned into the slow, liminal quality of looping improvisations, inspired by ambient comfort and the strange stillness of lo-fi music. Barrette added unpredictable rhythmic complexity, like the rare 15/8 time signature on “Quinze,” and sonic oddities - glass bottle percussion, banjo-synth hybrids, and distorted field recordings. Tracks like “Vitric” unfolds like a synthesizer-led funeral march, written the same week McLaren’s cousin and closest childhood friend was found after going missing.
The album’s narrative turns hauntingly personal as it progresses. In “Lo-finite,” an automated operator breaks the fourth wall, reminding listeners that they, too, are on borrowed time. Please Hold lulls the listener into a false sense of security before pulling the rug out, one dial tone at a time.
“It started as a joke about hold music,” says McLaren. “Then it became a meditation on death.”
Please Hold isn’t just an album - it’s a call you won’t forget.
To experience the album, dial:
1-877-420-9159
D I S C O V E R
Youtube:
https://youtube.com/@thecavernous6344?si=jfAPcVd7axGwMoFYTikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@the_cavernous?_t=ZM-8sY59HmBumz&_r=1Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/thecavernous?igsh=MXRkdGw3dDVhZTZvbA==Spotify:
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