Sam Scherdel is looking at a relationship falling apart on Kyoto Snow (out now via Broke Records / Ostereo). Colin Elliot produced it at Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield, blending Scherdel’s folk and Americana sensibilities with his pop sensibility.
Organic instrumentation surrounds Scherdel’s rather raspy lead vocal, lending the recording a certain warmth. The lyrics are a very delicate tracing of a connection which is increasingly fragile. The tension is in trying to hold on to something beautiful when the situation around it has become so difficult.
The song started with a title rather than a personal confession. Scherdel’s manager David Cameron-Pryde gave him a songwriting exercise in the form of a list of potential titles. Kyoto Snow was the title that got him thinking about beauty in an unexpected place, beauty that was fleeting and would be gone before you could even grasp it.
Kyoto Snow came from a songwriting challenge my manager David Cameron-Pryde set me. He gave me a list of titles and asked me to write songs around them. Kyoto Snow was one of those titles, and something about it immediately connected with me.
I started thinking about finding something beautiful in a place where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it. Something rare, something fleeting, something that might only exist for a moment before it disappears.
We live in a world that can feel incredibly toxic at times, and I wanted to write something that acknowledged that darkness without surrendering to it. The snow became a metaphor for those moments of beauty that somehow survive amongst everything else.
There’s a relationship at the centre of the song, and you can hear that relationship beginning to fracture. But there’s still this desperate attempt to hold on to something beautiful. For me, it’s an anthem about finding beauty in the darkest of places.
The release follows a period of significant growth in Scherdel’s audience through streaming, social discovery, and TV. Somewhere in the Middle is approaching 4m Spotify streams, has 7m TikTok views and has been used twice on ITV’s Love Island: All Stars.
That reach is a self-funded phase of his career. After losing his job in 2022 he went on to fund his own recordings and releases without any label behind them. The opportunities since have been SXSW in Austin, The Great Escape and a slot supporting Duran Duran at BST Hyde Park.
Now recording with Broke Records/Ostereo, Scherdel has the upcoming EP Boy Who Fell To Earth in the pipeline. Kyoto Snow is a more reflective track in that same progression, one that’s about what you can actually hold on to when the future is in doubt.