Botany

BOTANY is the catch-all title for the musical quests of Spencer Stephenson, a young Texas musician who calls “somewhere between Denton and Austin” his home. Hearing echoes from both coasts, all times, and everywhere in between, Spencer draws upon many a genre but settles in none. BOTANY in its present form could be described as a kind of Naturalist’s gospel in the form of beat-music— rhythmic hymns that pulse and drone in praise of leaf veins and jellyfish ‘branes, and in celebration of existing involuntarily amongst the colorful mess. Stephenson’s stoner-collages sound equally good in a spaceship or deep-sea submersible, or in your parents’ basement.

After meeting the band members by chance in early 2009, a year-long stint as the drummer of experimental Texas act Sleep Whale led Stephenson to the doorsteps of Western Vinyl with whom he signed in the summer of 2010. Spencer soon made his introduction with the Feeling Today EP, a humble collection of tracks dedicated to his recently deceased mother, pieced together in the house where she raised him.