siLLy puPPy PIKE 200 - 7 DAYS TIL HALLOWEEN: CAVERNOUS is the 99th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015 and the 25th album in the countdown to HALLOWEEN. Another weird and freaky track turning the whole month of October into a spooky freakfest. BUCKETHEAD produces all the sounds heard here himself on another all instrumental album. The album clocks in 25 seconds over the half hour mark and contains 8 tracks titled “Cavernous.” They pretty much all run together creating a half hour experience.

The album starts off with a familiar sound reminding me of “Pike 179” with that “Cymbellenium” sound of Michael Masley. This is another weird one. The main gist seems to be several different things overlapping. There is a percussion procession doing its own thing, more of a jittery random rhythmic thing that bounces all over the place. The cymbellenium stringed instrument sound is also independent and does some avant-garde scale. After these two play together for a while a keyboard riff comes in and does its own thing. It basically sounds like three totally unrelated tracks playing at the same time not hearing what the others are doing.

For a while this is very out of sync but eventually they all kind of line up for a while and sound like they’re playing together as much as these totally contrasting sounds can but that seems to be a sleight of ear since and its really like the clock being right twice a day. Actually come to think of it some of this sounds like the microtonal avant-garde works of Harry Partch in how some of this flows particularly reminding me of segments of his “And On The Seventh Day, Petals Fell In Petaluma” in how it sounds like homemade instruments that live in their own musical world and exhibit their own musical grammar. Eventually there is a blowing wind kind of ambience in the background.

This album pretty much stays the same throughout its entirety with only the background ambience changing things up. This is a highly avant-garde and freaky album. It sounds like microtonal melodies are firmly rooted in the progression of the music but alternate tunings abound in unorthodox ways. This is stuff outside the comprehension of mere mortal. For freaks only.