Spencer Stephenson
's work as
Botany
has taken many forms, from the chillwave-adjacent pop of his debut EP,
Feeling Today
, to his acclaimed 2016 spiritual jazz excursion
Deepak Verbera
. After merging hip-hop and new age influences on the 2018 debut by
the Skull Eclipses
, a collaboration with
Lushlife
that included guest appearances by
Open Mike Eagle
and
Laraaji
,
's first proper LP in four years is a psychedelic beat collage sporting some of
Stephenson
's most dynamic, three-dimensional production to date. The majority of the tracks on
End the Summertime F(or)ever
sport fractured breakbeats rolling through dusty soundscapes filled with samples that often feel scrunched up or warped. The album expresses multiple perceptions of the meaning of summer, from being a time of freedom and vacation from school to being the deadliest months of the year, filled with endless heat waves, wildfires, and mounting concern over the effects of climate change. While it appears sunny and beach-worthy on the surface, there's a much more sinister subtext evident in the cryptic vocal samples spread throughout the album. Two tracks conclude with a brief collage stating that "the end of summer/and the United States" will be "groovy," and smudged choirs of disembodied voices call out from the beyond the void on tracks like "Quiet Down." The main vocal sample on "Once We Die" appears to say "one sweet night" if you're not paying close enough attention, making the song appear to be a nostalgic reminiscence of a special evening rather than something meant to ponder the afterlife. "Vision of This Earth Before Our Time" and "Aya" pick up the tempo a bit, lapsing into fuzzy, crackly house, bookending "That's the One (Too Bad)," a
Clams Casino
-like downer filled to the brim with sounds, from choppy, melancholic vocals to solemn trumpets.
's hazy, bittersweet vision of summer is resplendent as well as apocalyptic. ~ Paul Simpson