During our interview with The Vernon Spring—the alias of the London-based composer and producer Sam Beste—the idea of balance came up more than once. Indeed, Under a Familiar Sun, the artist’s recently released record on RVNG Intl., aims for a few separate equilibriums, both sonically and conceptually. Featuring a list of collaborators ranging from respected literary figures to classical musicians, the album is full of delicate, exploratory music, all anchored by Beste’s keyboard playing. Arching over the entire project is a desire to synthesize the personal with the political; the familial life with the concerns of the larger world. We send some questions over to the artist about both the project and his life in music. Give the interview a read and listen to Under a Familiar Sun below. 

Where does the name of your new record come from?

Sam Beste: The title came from a lyric that I had for a song that was originally called “Mother.” Eventually all the vocals were taken out but the title and instrumental remained. In time, I realised that the title encompassed many of the themes explored on this record. It relates to our doors of perception, that we can at once be looking at our experience and be blind to it. It relates to something that is always there “under” that familiarity, that something being truth, I suppose. On the flip side, the original meaning of familiar is: intimate, very friendly, on a family footing. So the word familiar also has the same route as family, and therefore brings me back to the core inspiration for all this music: my love of my partner and our three sons. 

When you worked on these tracks, did they always start on the keys? Do sounds or rhythms ever guide you as much as the language of the piano? 

Yes, all of these compositions were seeded at my beloved Bluthner piano. On this record I was often interacting with the idea of multidimensionality in creating the productions together with my producer Iko Niche—drawing on diverse source materials including field recordings and sampling of archival unreleased music in order to create the clay that we would then chip away at and subtract from. 

 

How do you find your sense of balance—both as a musician and a person? And does the latter affect the former? 

This is a continual question for me! I'm in search of rituals that can serve to calm the nervous system, and encourage (re)discovering a sense of connection (to ourselves, each other, the planet, and the universe). Music of course has the potential to be a vehicle for this in itself. I've been studying Indian classical singing over the past few years with an incredible teacher called Ranjana Ghatak and begin each studio day with meditative long notes. After some singing I move onto playing piano. It's important to me that I do both of these things before looking at a screen. I also rely a lot on exercise—I find running very inspiring, and try to go to a yoga class once a week. Central to maintaining a sense of balance in my life are my family too, spending time with my partner and our three sons is rejuvenating.

Do you think that in some ways this record is about a sense of balance?

Honestly, I wasn't sure how to answer this one. But, thinking about it, you could say that it's partly about trying to understand how to balance multiple concurrent layers of experience. On the one hand it's a love letter to my nuclear family, and on the other it's grappling with how that love relates to my broader responsibilities and agency in a world that often feels overwhelmed by division, cruelty, and alienation. And yet underpinning it all, I feel that I was guided by a sense or belief in the fundamental goodness within us—when I listen to the record as a whole, sometimes it feels like cracks begin to appear, and that this belief shines through. 

Has having children modified how you approach music? 

It feels to me like my children gifted pillars to my life that were missing—that before there was an imbalance in my structure, which they helped to rebalance. I can't say that they directly modified how I approach music, but they do feature on this new record! :) On the song “Norton,” you can hear a little snippet of my son Shea, and on “Esrever Ni Rehtaf” there are longer field recordings of them chatting, sometimes reversed.  

 

Could you talk a bit about the collaborative process on Under a Familiar Sun? 

I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked with the souls who contributed so deeply to this record. Brooklyn based vocalist, producer, writer, and Harvard astro-physics PhD student aden features on a number of tracks. They brought their masterful musicianship, playful energy, and compassionate depth to all of our collaborative sessions, which resulted in them adding writing to “Esrever Ni Rehtaf” and “Counted Strings,” and spellbinding performances to songs like “Other Tongues.” Another close collaborator was my close friend Calum Duncan. We call Calum “The Chef” for his wizard-like use of FX pedals and other esoteric outboards to create soundworlds from any ingredients. Often on this record he was processing my piano, but sometimes also the voice and cello. 

Max Porter in many ways sets the conceptual frame for the record with his piece on “The Breadline.” After becoming friends with Max through working together at Sounds From A Safe Harbour festival in 2023, I soon realised that I heard a space for his lyrical and literal voice at the beginning. I sent him an email in late October and he wrote back within two hours with the words you hear on the track fully formed! In our email exchanges we grappled with the gap between ourselves and the unspeakable pain of others in a world increasingly vacant of moral leadership. Max said to me that despite our conversations the music “brings out something so much more abstract or prayer-like, a kind of quiet pleading half-message, like a voice-note to a ghost.” 

It has been a joy to work with Kate Ellis on all the cellos on this record. I feel a real affinity with how she approaches music making. She often prefers not to hear the music in advance of recording. She wants to dive straight in and capture her very first instinctive responses to the music and then all the magical layering she does evolves from there. Under a Familiar Sun has a more involved and intense production sound compared to my previous work, courtesy of producer Iko Niche. Iko brought a bit more hip-hop to proceedings with his 808s, his love of texture, and his conceptual attraction to surprise and shifts, both within tracks and across a record. You should check out his mixtapes…

You’ve also done some collaborating with rappers. What have you learned from that process and do you apply any of those lessons to your own music?

I've been very lucky to work a lot with UK rapper Kano over his past three records, together with his producer Blue May who is a dear friend of mine. It's always deeply inspiring working with them, both on a sonic level and a conceptual level, and I come away hungry to apply some of what I have learned to my own music making. Some of the most imaginative records of recent times have been made within the rap sphere—records where radical unexpected turns and combinations are possible, records with broad emotional scope, records that are challenging in a good way, they encourage you to wake up from your slumber! 

 

What kind of music do you like to listen to when you want to unwind from work?

John Coltrane, Miles Davis, D'Angelo, Ravel, Debussy, Tara Clerkin Trio, Good Bad Happy Sad, Tom Skinner, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Ideophone...

 

You’ve had such a long and varied career. Can you remember any particularly surreal performance moments?

The one that comes to mind is when I was lucky enough to be invited to perform with MF DOOM live on BBC Radio 4. The band was made up of myself, my friend Alexis on drums, Oliver Coates on piano, and Mara Carlyle on acoustic saw! We performed his song “Winter Blues” in one take, without a rehearsal, with DOOM in his mask. It was a beautiful and definitely surreal experience.