Brighton’s Adam Kane benefits from time away with relaunch as Sad Funeral

His new solo project, Kazbeg is one of the first creative fruits to have grown following a period of reflection and recuperation away from writing altogether.

Feeling the pressure and pace of the industry, Adam made a conscious decision to extricate himself from the spotlight to find a different way of life and also to find inspiration in new places.

“I wrote the track when I returned from Georgia with my partner where I’d been visiting the village of Kazbegi” he says. “It’s somewhere we’d often talked about going due to the remote and mountainous location.”

Finding solace and focus in the mountains, Adam came back to his long-time home of Brighton with a new sense of purpose, he says.

Hence the new start as Sad Funeral.

“Band names I have always thought were a bit stupid, and some of them are just ridiculous. They are just a marker for what you are doing.

“I was watching the Wes Anderson film Isle of Dogs and there was a funeral in there and there was a subtitle saying ‘sad funeral’ – and the words just stayed in my head. I thought I would go with that.

“I was in a band called Cave Painting, but we are going back six or seven years. It is a long time since we have done anything. We were signed to Universal and Sony and we had tours and stuff, and then it came to a natural ending. We stopped. We started another band called Company. We had another publishing deal and international tours and then everybody decided that they didn’t want to do it anymore. They weren’t liking the music.

“So I didn’t touch music for years and years. This is my first time back. I couldn’t imagine it. It is like when you break up with somebody and you think there is no one else out there for you. I had been in a band with the guys for seven or eight years. I started to try to do other things, many different jobs and then finally carpentry and then gradually I got the confidence back to play music again. I didn’t feel I could do anything by myself. When you are in a band, you are bouncing ideas off other people, and when there are other people it becomes easier and it toughens you up. When you are by yourself, it feels a lot scarier.

“But I think having time away, you get over it and you get over personal things as well. I was not in a good place when all that stopped. But I am in a better place now. It is just a question of mental health and time and realising how much I missed doing something. But when you get deep into the music industry and labels, a lot of the reasons why you are doing it in the first place start to lose their charm. It can become very convoluted. But this feels so much better now. When it is just you, it is really quite simple to record something and to distribute it yourself. As soon as other people are involved, the quick and simple things aren’t so quick and simple anymore. But I think it is also about doing it without any expectations and you start to realise that you are doing something that you really enjoy.”

Adam decided to test the water with two low-key single releases under his new Sad Funeral name in 2019: Gone and Escape. Buoyed by the positive response, he is now releasing Kazbeg.

“Kazbeg feels like a very positive and natural progression from what was a tentative start at writing by myself following my years with Cave Painting.

“The song isn’t necessarily about a break-up but more about a relationship that is lacking in areas being put under the microscope. I’ve also been writing a lot from different perspectives, one of those being my partner’s and I’ve used the writing process to examine some of my own shortcomings.”