Cave Painting

Biography

Cave Painting is an alt-rock band from Brighton, UK, formed in 2010 and signed to Third Rock Recordings. They released the singles "So Calm", as well as their debut EP, You'll Be Running Soon in 2011, featuring "Midnight Love", "Rio" and two other songs. They also released a demo of their song "Leaf" as a free download on social network sites. Their album Votive Life was released by Third Rock Recordings on 24 September 2012.[3] Band members are lead vocalist Adam Kane, keyboardist Sam Simon,...

Cave Painting is an alt-rock band from Brighton, UK, formed in 2010 and signed to Third Rock Recordings. They released the singles "So Calm", as well as their debut EP, You'll Be Running Soon in 2011, featuring "Midnight Love", "Rio" and two other songs. They also released a demo of their song "Leaf" as a free download on social network sites.

Their album Votive Life was released by Third Rock Recordings on 24 September 2012.[3]

Band members are lead vocalist Adam Kane, keyboardist Sam Simon, guitarist Harry Smallwood, bassist Richard Snabel and drummer Jonathan McCawley.

The origins of Brighton five-piece Cave Painting are that singer Adam Kane, keyboard player Sam Simon, guitarist Harry Smallwood, bassist Richard Snabel and drummer Jonathan McCawley came together from various cities and towns to Brighton, formed a band, called it Rob The Rich, and promptly began writing and playing together.
 
The group of friends soon hit on something that felt right “It was... focused on the live show,” Snabel explains of the first band’s untethered, frenetic sound. “We’d written some new songs, and our previous manager didn’t like them,” laughs Snabel. “He gave us an ultimatum,” adds Kane. “It was, ‘Do it the way I think you should do it, or that’s it.” And so, that was it. ‘It’ being the real birth of Cave Painting. They locked themselves in Brighton’s Electric Studios over a period of six months.

By the time Cave Painting announced their first live show, at London’s The Social in April 2011, demos had been fizzing around the inboxes of the movers and shakers of the capital’s industry bigwigs, and the venue was packed to the rafters, “One of the guys we work with looked at the guest list on the way in,” remembers Sam. “One of our mates heard him say, ‘Jesus, if they screw this up... that’s it.”
 
But there was no screw up. And after storming that show, Cave Painting were soon on the road that saw them firming up a deal with Third Rock Recordings, the label set up by former Parlophone MD Keith Wozencroft, the man who signed Radiohead and built a roster that included Sigur Ros, Gorillaz, Coldplay, Kylie and LCD Soundsystem.
 
A path was outlined, and in November 2011 after trying out a few producers they settled on Barny Barnicott, (Artic Monkeys, Kasabian) and at his Bluebell studios in Kent they crafted ‘Votive Life’ – Cave Painting’s debut album, set for release in the Autumn.
 
By this point the band were well honed and slick – and the album was in the bag within two months, no dramas, and acted as a slingshot into a UK-wide tour with Alt-J as well as a slew of their own headline shows.
 
Touch-points those who witnessed the shows were the bands who straddle the line between unashamedly epic and delicately deft – and it’s always the finest of lines. All members of Cave Painting love The National and Arcade Fire – stuff that feels right in front of thousands, a strong enough pull for the masses, but with no compromise, nothing sold-out, and nothing lost with the expansion. “It’s about riding that line of epic-ness,” agrees Sam. “But it’s not something that we’ve specifically set out to do. We haven’t really set out to do anything.” It’s natural. There are possible influences in album opener ‘Leaf’, subtle Wild Beasts-esque flurries in ‘Gator’, shadows of the hum and glow of ‘Neon Bible’-era Arcade Fire cutting through ‘Only Us’. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.