The Disco Biscuits Perform ‘2001’ Theme Halloween Show At The Caverns

The Disco Biscuits offered a Halloween concert on Thursday night to kick off a three-night run at The Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee. The jamtronica quartet delivered an improvised score to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey during the second set and debuted an iconic piece of music from the film’s soundtrack.

The Disco Biscuits — bassist Marc Brownstein, guitarist Jon “The Barber” Gutwillig, keyboardist Aron Magner and drummer Allen Aucoin — launched the concert with the Brownstein composition “Caterpillar.” Following a 23-minute exploration, the band then headed into their staple cover of Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell.”

The quartet then segued into an inverted version of Magner’s “Digital Buddha,” followed by the relatively new tune “Dino Baby,” debuted during the band’s New Year’s Eve run in 2023. Bisco bookended the first set with “Caterpillar.”

The Disco Biscuits have long performed improvised scores to films, beginning on New Year’s Eve 1999 with an accompaniment to the 1988 animated Japanese cyberpunk movie, Akira. They’ve also sonically interpreted Alice In Wonderland, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Koyaanisqatsi, and Run Lola Run.

Ahead of their March 2023 run at The Caverns, tDB opened up a fan vote to choose a film they would improvise along with. The movie that won out was another sci-fi flick, The Fifth Element. The band turned to a towering work in the genre, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for this year’s Halloween festivities.

Bisco made their second set entrance to A Space Odyssey‘s main theme, “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” originally a tone poem – a classical music piece interpreting a work of writing — by Richard Strauss, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. With 2001 rolling, Bisco explored some spacey sci-fi stylings before touching on “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to coincide with the first time it appears in the movie, the iconic scene where an ape smashes a skull with a bone and subsequently throws it into the sky where it becomes a spaceship.

“Also Sprach Zarathustra” was a debut for Bisco, and the band also incorporated elements of Johann Strauss’ (no relation to Richard) “The Blue Danube,” which was also used in A Space Odyssey, into the improvised score. tDB returned to “Zarathustra” for the film and second set conclusion. The band came back out to finish up “Run Like Hell” for the encore.

The Disco Biscuits’ Caverns run continues tonight (November 1). Livestreams are available via nugs.net. Scroll down for tDb’s full itinerary and ticket info.

Setlist (via Biscuits Internet Project 2.0)

Set One: Caterpillar > Run Like Hell > Digital Buddha 1 > Dino Baby > Caterpillar

Set Two: 2001: A Space Odyssey Jam 2 > Also Sprach Zarathustra 3

Encore: Run Like Hell

Notes:

• 1 inverted
• 2 improvised score to the film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)
• 3 FTP (Richard Strauss)