Brighton-based, London-born Sam Beste AKA The Vernon Spring has been releasing for 6 years and is a well kept secret for those seeking intricate yet laid back piano, and music at the perfect intersection of jazz and contemporary electronic production. His new Under a Familiar Sun album, released last Friday on 9th May on Opia. It’s chilled yet experimental, Track 1 sets the tone with Norton, both jolting and bluesy it’s part of a wider tapestry that traces loss on the album.
There’s a sense of push and pull on Mustafa (feat. Iko Niche), whose collaborator produced this album; street noises and a sort of radio crackle engage with Beste’s winding piano melody. It’s like a mind jumping between different memories, patching the past together. This is thanks to Iko Niche’s support broadening the sonic landscape on The Vernon Spring project, integrating hip-hop references and methods that foreground sampling. The Vernon Spring’s electronic side comes out on this record, situating itself in the 21st century with copy and paste cuts that are untraditional.
Under a Familiar Sun feels like a shift from the time Beste spent touring with Amy Winehouse, composing for Kano or playing piano live on Radio 4 for MF DOOM. But it’s the jazz roots that tie all these threads together: a necessarily rebellious genre saturated with emotions and resistance. Sam Beste’s parents, after all, were lifelong anti-war activists.
Speaking on the project, Beste shared, “It gives me this feeling of hope and belief in the fundamental goodness that is within all of us” adding, “Even though the album grapples with the world that we’re living in, and how family and our personal lives are related to the broader world, politically and spiritually.” Tension is an inevitable part of modern culture and society where seemingly everywhere you look you can find an opposite or contradiction.