“The so-called ‘other’ reverberates in me: you,” recites the poet Max Porter on “The Breadline”, accompanied by cello and warm impressionistic piano that echoes, pauses, and morphs into new phrases. This line from the second track of The Vernon Spring’s newest record, Under a Familiar Sun, powerfully captures the existential mediation that spans the album, a warm, experimental and often beautiful work that explores how we connect with others, both on a personal and global level. 

For Sam Beste, the London-raised pianist, composer and producer behind The Vernon Spring, Porter’s contribution helped to create a conceptual framework for this album, which has been several years in the making. As a young musician, Beste got his start as the live pianist for Amy Winehouse and as part of the neo-soul band Hejira. In 2016, he co-founded Lima Limo, a label and artist collective with a mission of helping cultivate community for music makers. Several years later, Beste began uploading singles online as The Vernon Spring, with his debut record A Plane Over Woods releasing in 2021, followed by Earth, on a Good Day in 2022. 

The Vernon Spring , Under a Familiar Sun. Photograph by Saoirse Fitzpatrick.

The Vernon Spring’s music tends to be a piano-forward melange of jazz, classical, ambient and electronic. Under a Familiar Sun continues this aesthetic but also builds upon it, leaning into the electronic elements and, inspired by co-producer and collaborator Iko Niche, adopting a more sample-driven, hip-hop-influenced approach. In addition to Beste’s felted piano are 808s, synthesizers, archival field recordings, snippets of previously unused instrumentation, and audio of his kids. Vocals and instruments are fragmented, looped, processed and layered: a kaleidoscope of sounds that, as in the opening track “Norton”, dazzles without disorienting. 

The record is also deeply collaborative. As a session musician, Beste has worked with a range of artists, including Beth Orton, Kano, MF Doom, Matthew Herbert. Yet, in line with the community-focused ethos of Lima Limo, the collaborations on Under a Familiar Sun feel more homegrown. Among Beste’s eclectic crew of contributors are producer Iko Niche, poet Max Porter, cellist Kate Ellis, former bandmate Calum Duncan, and aden, a producer, writer, and PhD candidate in astrophysics. These creative partnerships were fostered, at least in part, online, with Beste sending instrumentals and his collaborators responding with their own contributions. 

The Vernon Spring , Under a Familiar Sun. Photograph by Saoirse Fitzpatrick.

Beste’s family is also a strong influence on Under a Familiar Sun. The album was partly recorded in his home studio in Brighton, where he moved with his partner, Saoirse Fitzpatrick, and children in 2021. The picture at the centre of the album’s cover—designed by the artist Eric Timothy Carlson, who created the cover for Bon Iver’s 22, A million and whose work also served as an inspiration for Under a Familiar Sun—was taken by Fitzpatrick: a sun-drenched photo of Beste and his three children playing in the ocean. 

As Beste puts it, the record is “an intimate exploration of domesticity” amidst a broader meditation on “global responsibility in an age of moral uncertainty.” Songs like “In the Middle”, with its gorgeous instrumentation by Beste and Ellis and repeated refrain of “In the middle of the night, that’s when I see you best”, captures the intimacy of creating a life with one’s partner, of being with them in the odd hours when no one else is around, the gratitude for such closeness. At the same time, the current global context creates a dissonance, with conflicts beginning and escalating worldwide, unchecked by the entrenched apparatus of international peacekeepers. In the visualizer for the “Requiem for Reem”, text reads: “All of these names, in order of age, each of them as precious as my sons”, a testament to the many child casualties in Gaza. 

The Vernon Spring , Under a Familiar Sun. Photograph by Saoirse Fitzpatrick.

It is in this context that Porter’s poetic contribution to the record is fully realized. Under a Familiar Sun is an exercise in empathy, an artistic statement of humanity and solidarity grappling with the perimeters of human connection. It is a record that confronts difficult questions—how one can reconcile domestic happiness and love for community with the loss, violence, alienation and disillusionment born of current global events. Yet, it does so with warmth and gratitude. The record captures sonically the synaptic overload of trying to make sense of our world. Still, it is ultimately hopeful, highlighting the beauty of life and the sense that, in the end, there is more that connects than divides us.