Name: Sam Beste aka The Vernon Spring
Nationality: British  
Occupation: Producer, composer, pianist
Recent release: The Vernon Spring's new album Under a Familiar Sun is out via RVNG Intl.

If you enjoyed this Vernon Spring interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on  Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.  



How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

The question took make straight back to two teenage memories of being transported whilst listening to music on headphones.

I remember listening to Miles Davis’ version of “I Loves You Porgy” on my Sony Discman at night time in bed before going to sleep, I must have been about 15 or so.



The sound of those recordings … recorded live in beautiful sounding rooms, on the most wonderful microphones like the Neumann M49 ... Oooofff! I remember having this feeling of merging with the music, like I was dissolved within it. That’s definitely something headphones can bring.

The other memory it brought back was listening to Donny Hathaway’s live album whilst walking to school, again on my Discman.



I remember walking up my road and I was hit so so strong by the feel on his version of “What’s Going On” that opens that record ...

The feel is just so so so DEEP! I really danced my way to school that day!

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

What a delicious question!

Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, what can I say ... it’s a lesson in how great sounding records are the combination of so many parts.

It’s the spirit in the room, cultivated and surrendered to by the musicians, it’s the sound of their instruments, the placement of the mics, the sound of the particular recording preamps and of course the sound of the room.



D’Angelo's Voodoo has to get a mention! Still the blueprint of modern sound making in many ways.

So rich, so organic, so beautifully recorded and mixed. Every time I put that record on it takes my breath away and I have to stop, listen and learn!



Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers! TEXTURE!!!!



Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly. I adore the detail in Kendrick’s records, so meticulously crafted. This record feels like a shining light of what digital technology opened up in terms of production possibility. It’s example of how imaginative and wide-ranging sound making has the potential to be.



Gabriels' Love and Hate In A Different Time. On this first EP they did everything in their home studio and I just love the sound they made. So raw and full of vitality.

I had the great honour of working with them in this way on their second record and it was so amazing to see how they worked.



Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? Ifso, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

It’s a cliche but when strings are used well it has a really powerful response.

Two examples that come to mind are on Kendrick records, where they use strings so deeply to take the emotion to a higher plane. Like on “Auntie Diaries” …



Kendrick has this incredible ability to have emotion crescendo across a song, and when the strings start to creep in around 2m45s … man! The first time I heard that the tears started coming but it was also a deeply euphoric and cathartic feeling.

I’m not sure why strings have the capacity to do that, something about so many people playing together to create one big sound is part of it I feel.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

I’m always drawn in by a church bell!

My bum bag is bulging because I have to bring my portable recorder with me at all times, just in case there’s a sound that I want to capture whilst out and about. During the first lockdown in the covid pandemic I got some incredible recordings of birds like so many of us did. I’m also quite drawn to certain city sounds too … trains for instance. Or the sound of tannoy speaker announcements in different countries and the little electronic announcement sounds you get across the world.

It’s one of my favourite aspects of travelling with music, hearing the sound environments of different parts of the earth. Each place is so particular in that sense. In San Francisco I remember waking up to the distant sound of boat horns… it felt so musical, and also soothing somehow.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Absolutely, especially in terms of producing music.

A big part of making this new record was a subtractive process. It felt like I had a large piece of multimedia clay composed of pianos, voices, lyrics, field recordings, samples, synths etc, which I would carve into and chip away at until the balance of the different elements communicated in a resonant way.

You hear this most explicitly on tracks like ‘Norton’ and ‘Mustafa’.



There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I really struggle with the sound of a hard bristle broom on a stone floor!

Bird song and the singing of streams I could listen to indefinitely, and I should make time to do so more often!

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

Our dishwasher has some great polyrhythms once it gets going! And at the end of its cycle it creates this little melody which reminds my partner of the Curtis Mayfield song ‘Move On Up’! What a great feature for a dishwasher! :)

This question also takes me back to a moment where I was in Portugal with my family on a very windy day and we were walking down this beautiful path to the beach. We reached the carpark at the beachfront and I said to my partner, “what’s that sound”?! I could hear rapid pentatonic cascades, but it was also kind of multi-tonal too. It honestly sounded like John Coltrane in his free period!

For a short while I couldn’t work out where the sound was coming from and then I realised that it was the wind blowing through the roof racks on the top of an old VW van! The wind had turned the van into the flute and the music that came from it was really so powerful. I learned a lot from that moment.

It also made me reflect on Coltrane … that maybe that’s partly what he was seeking to channel with all his devotion to music … to be so intimately at one with nature and the universe that your music flows through you, like wind through the roof racks of a VW!

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

I was once in an incredible cave with my family in Spain. It’s quite a disorientating experience, both sonically and spatially, your sense of distance feels warped for instance. And the sound was incredible yeah.

I remember wishing that I could come back one day with a portable recorder and record some music in a space like that, wouldn’t that be magical?!

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

Pretty much all of my records have been made in my own studio, which I love dearly. It’s such a gift to have a place of sanctuary.

I do love performing in churches although the acoustics can be a little challenging for some material.

It’s also lovely to play in concert hall spaces where the sound can be so clear and listening on and off stage has the potential to be so attentive and meditative.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Making my new record ‘Under a Familiar Sun’ has sometimes really felt like I was working sculpturally. I would compose clay of pianos, synths, field recordings, 808s, vocals and samples.

And then in the production phases I would chip away at that clay until the shape felt right.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

Deep one! I wish my friend Rahel was with me right now to help me answer this question. She’s a sound therapist and I’d be so curious to know her response.

In all honesty I don’t have any grand theories on this, but from personal experience I feel it is really important to have access to a diversity of sonic environments.

Being a born and bred Londoner I actually really love the sounds of the city. I was in Marseille recently and it’s an incredible city too, so much life and energy. But then I also definitely need connection to the calmer spaces, the forests, the lakes, the sea!

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

In the first lockdown during the pandemic we were very fortunate to be stuck in the sticks ...

We were living in a barn in west Sussex in the middle of woodland for 4 months. It was quite a remarkable experience as the world had slowed down. There were no planes in the sky, there were less cars on the roads. It was spring and it felt like the birds were rejoicing in the extra space. People feel that in the cities too, but in the forests it was kind of orchestral!

A few mornings I set my alarm for dawn to and headed out into the forest with my portable recording equipment to capture the dawn chorus. It was a mesmerising sound. At first it was just a trickle, a few lone birds starting to sing, and gradually it grew and grew until it was this dense sound of song. What a gift!

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?

I’m coming to the realisation that we can begin to transform an experience of alienation and division into one of connection and indivisibility through giving and through conversation.

It’s in realising that we are an active participant in the natural and spiritual world, what are constantly in a conversation, and that we have the power in ever moment to contribute positively and with care to that conversation. And that of course includes our relationships to animals, to plants, but also to the unseen like our ancestors.

A friend of mine recently told me that he would overcome stage freight by taking a moment to speak to his deceased grandmother at the side of stage. And that through doing this, through opening up this conversation and asking for help, a calm would take over his body.

I’m not sure I’ve quite answered your question but this is what came out!

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

In a cultural world where we are often overwhelmed by visual input, I do feel that music, sound and the act of listening hold a special power to be able to bring us back to a state of presence and groundedness.

Early on whilst making this new record a close friend of mine sent me a quote from George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I kept coming back to the quote throughout the making of the album, and it feels directly linked to your question also:

“That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence”.