The Vernon Spring

The Vernon Spring—London-born composer and producer Sam Beste—announces his new album, Under a Familiar Sun, out May 9th via RVNG Intl., and presents its lead single,  “The Breadline (feat. Max Porter)” b/w “Requiem for Reem.” Perhaps music’s best kept secret, Beste has been releasing solo music since 2019, developing a distinctive voice at the intersection of jazz, soul, ambient, and contemporary electronic production. Across 12 tracks, Under a Familiar Sun perfectly showcases the breadth of Beste’s artistic evolution. Emerging from a long period of compositional and collaborative experimentation, the album represents a shift from his familiar and immediate production to a more involved and intricate approach. While working with producer Iko Niche, Beste broadened his sonic landscape, integrating hip-hop influences and sample-driven methods while sustaining his characteristic piano composition.

The album, produced and mixed predominantly in Beste’s studio, features dynamic contributions from several collaborators, including writer Max Porter on lead single, “The Breadline.” The poem featured on this song sets the conceptual framework for the entire album. Conversations between Porter and Beste over email grappled with “the gap between ourselves and the unspeakable pain of others in a world increasingly vacant of moral leadership” but resulted in a gloriously uplifting piece of music, described by Porter as “bringing out something so much more abstract or prayer-like, a kind of quiet pleading half-message, like a voice-note to a ghost.”

The track is paired with “Requiem for Reem,” which Beste calls “the closest this album gets to a conventional piano composition that you could notate.” Featuring an elegiac piano line that breathes a precious air of mourning and loss, viscerally flowing across parallel worlds, Beste says “its sounds resonate simple yet profound, and emanate a feeling of catharsis that you might feel through accepting, facing and honouring something precious that has been lost.”

These two new songs follow last month’s release of the album track “Norton,” which reflects on love, awe, and gratitude for family, friends, and community. Composed through a multi-dimension of fragmented vocal hooks, felted piano loops, and layers of synthesized sound and archival recording samples, it sometimes finds Beste quite literally playing the sound of a memory shared with a friend or family member.

Currently based in Brighton with his partner and three sons, Beste realised Under a Familiar Sun as an intimate exploration of domesticity as well as a wider meditation on responsibility in a time of palpable uncertainty. Described by Beste as “a love letter to my nuclear family,” the album showcases an artist working across new spheres of sonic potential, merging personal devotion and moral consciousness. Under a Familiar Sun, which arrives with stunning artwork by Eric Timothy Carlson (Bon Iver), orients The Vernon Spring towards a new phase of innovation, marking a significant moment for Beste, a distinctive voice in contemporary experimental music. 

After years of writing and releasing music with the alt-soul outfit Hejira during his mid-twenties, Beste helped form the Lima Limo collective and label, which offered a supportive community and inspiring creative foundation. By 2019, he began releasing solo music as The Vernon Spring, developing a voice that merged his jazz background with contemporary electronic production. His debut EP and subsequent releases, including the acclaimed A Plane Over Woods and Earth, On A Good Day, established a signature sound for The Vernon Spring: ethereal piano work layered with emotive vocals and subtle electronics. These previous releases have seen Beste amass over 50 million streams and work with a host of acclaimed artists over his career to date including Amy Winehouse, Gabriels, Kendrick Lamar’s producer Sounwave, Beth Orton, Kano, Joy Crookes, Matthew Herbert, and MF DOOM.

Under a Familiar Sun will be released on RVNG Intl. in North & South America, OPIA Community throughout the world, and Inpartmaint in Japan.