Name: End the Summertime F(or)ever
Brand: Botany

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

WV220lp

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2020-09-25

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Secre­tly

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

843563129647

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Botany

Genre US

Electronic

Label US

Western Vinyl

With only a handful of releases to his credit, Texas native Spencer Stephenson has covered a vast array of musical ground with his work as Botany. Integrating live instrumentation and dusty samples, his compositional techniques are informed by hip-hop and beat-heavy electronic music, but they reference spiritual jazz, psychedelic folk, ambient, and numerous other styles. His work varies from more rhythmic tracks to free-flowing washes of sound, but it's always conscious, uplifting, and organic.

Originally from northern Texas, Stephenson started experimenting with music production as a teenager, inspired by Four Tet, Madlib, J Dilla, and others. He began sharing his music online in 2008 and released his first EP Feeling Today, featuring vocalist Ashley Rathburn in 2010. Botany remixed artists such as Ryat and Cuushe and produced a track on Lushlife's 2012 album Plateau Vision.

In 2013, after relocating to a farm outside Austin, Stephenson recorded his full-length debut Lava Diviner (Truestory). The most hip-hop-oriented Botany release to date was the limited LP Dimming Awe, the Light Is Raw in 2015 which included guests like rapper Milo and Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid. In 2016 came the surprising excursion into cosmic

Austin-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Spencer Stephenson’s first solo LP in nearly four years End the Summertime F(or)ever is sample-studded mood board of bass-heavy abstract hip hop, spiraling psychedelia, and disco-house, that explores deep time, aging, societal upheaval, the afterlife, and the cosmic perspective as they appear through the distorting, relentless Texas heat. “I came up with the title in fall of 2018, so it was never meant to speak explicitly about pandemics or protests,” Stephenson comments, “but in the years I was putting it together I couldn’t help but acknowledge that an era of complacency was coming to a close for me and for the world, and that instinct shaped these tracks more than any other factor.”

End the Summertime F(or)ever asks the listener to reexamine what adjectives like “sunny” will come to mean in a world of rising global temperature, and unrest that will inevitably keep rising with it. Will cultural relics like Gershwin’s “Summertime” come off as smug reminders of a more verdant past? Isn’t sunlight, often considered a rejuvenating force in the realm of metaphor, also capable of fading, melting, and warping all that it touches? Isn’t that sun that we long for in winter the same one that will someday swallow the Earth with total indifference?

In the meantime Botany hosts an auditory mass exorcism for the angst, fatigue, confusion, and fervor of the times, summed up in the album’s spoken-word tagline spliced from self-help tapes and evangelical rants: “You’re off by yourself / in a quiet place / picture the Earth / as seen from Space / it’ll be so groovy / it’ll be so great / at the end of summer / and the United States.” 

End the Summertime F(or)ever

Music US