We’re back!

A lot of albums have dropped over the summer. Many of them were solid albums, with most of them being all-around great projects. From the return of the legendary rap duo, Clipse with Let God Sort Em Out, to Kevin Abstracts’ amalgamation of lush soundscapes from his album Blush, there have been a few standouts that have been released this summer.

To kick off the review of Summer 2025, I will be reviewing Quadeca’s fourth album, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper.

Singer, songwriter, rapper, producer, and entertainment extraordinaire Ben Lasky, better known by his stage name “Quadeca,” has had quite the musical glow up over the past few years. The rough experimentalism and potential shown on his sophomore album, From Me To You in 2021 was met with mixed critical reviews. However, the songwriting commonly falls short. The project also suffers from being bloated, with the album time measuring in at 1 hour 17 minutes in 24 songs.

In 2023, Quadeca would return with his third album, I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You. IDMTHY became an instant cult classic within the indie community. It features a diverse, transformative, and ethereal soundscapes surrounding the album’s story of a ghost of someone who had recently passed away watching his family forget, forgive, and mourn his memory. After the massive success of IDMTHY, Quadeca dropped a mixtape of loose songs that didn’t make either the previous album or the upcoming album, titled Scrapyard.

Released on July 25th with an accompanying album movie, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, like Quadeca’s past two projects, is a concept album. The concept is a “modern folklore” that revolves around a sailor going out to sea that is fueled by freedom and the human passion for chasing the horizon, a metaphor for unattainable goals. However, the sailor’s journey is also subconsciously fueled by his own self destruction, a narrative reinforced throughout the album.

Quadeca released three pre-release singles for Vanisher: “GODSTAINED,” “MONDAY,” and “FORGONE.” All three of these tracks were met with overwhelming critical and fan approval.

The story explores many different sounds, experiences, and feelings. These are all expressed throughout the songwriting, instrumentation and orchestration, and with the visuals expressed in the album movie released alongside the projects’ official release onto streaming services. The album seems to take what Quadeca learned from the release of I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You, and applies some of the song structure to Vanisher.

For example, the interludes of IDMTHY (the memories we lost in translation) and Vanisher (I DREAM ABOUT SINKING) are nearly identical. Both are instrumental-based interludes that bridge the more tame first part of the album to the chaotic second half of the project.

Another example is the song “THUNDRRR,” which has a lot of similarities to the track “knots” on IDMTHY. Both songs are surrounded by story-defining Danny Brown features, two songs removed from the interlude. For “knots,” it follows “house settling.” “house settling” is considered the pinnacle of IDMTHY’s story, where the ghost releases carbon monoxide (who, in this case, is Danny Brown) into the house he inhabits. Meanwhile, “THUNDRRR” is the lead up to “THE GREAT BAKUNAWA.” In the song, Quadeca’s character encounters Danny Brown as the Bakunawa, a mythological Filipino sea monster that eats the moon and causes eclipses, while causing Quadeca to wash his boat ashore. Both tracks are high energy, upbeat tracks that feature Quadeca rapping over chaotic, unrelenting, and unpredictable instrumentals.

The final examples are the outros, “cassini’s division” in IDMTHY, and “CASPER” in Vanisher. Both songs are seven minute, narrator-heavy conclusions to the album’s story. Where the first half of the song is made up of spoken word narration, the second half is usually tied together by instrumental decisions that tie into the album’s theme. For IDMTHY, the instrumental becomes completely static, as it signifies Quadeca’s ghost being vanquished out of limbo into God’s judgement, leaving only the static behind. On the other hand, “CASPER” becomes an uber-chaotic experience, featuring epic, accented drum entrances accompanied by crashing waves that pull Quadeca off his boat into the water and permanently submerges him underneath the water. After all is said and done. Quadeca’s characters in both albums are gone from the story, either from being thrown out of purgatory or drowning beneath the waves that consume him.

Even with the related nature of these songs, they go over well in the album’s story. The first half of the story starts with “WAGING WAR.” The song shows Quadeca getting high despite his consciousness’s best interests to hallucinate a mirrored version of himself. In “RUIN MY LIFE,” he lets potatoes rot and grow eyes to feel less alone. The lead single, “GODSTAINED,” features Quadeca talking to an empty anti-freeze bottle for life’s answers. Finally, in “DANCING WITHOUT MOVING,” Quadeca finally exposes his free will and self expression in the way of realizing there is nobody to judge him. All of these plot points in the story accompanied along with the grand instrumentation and beautiful songwriting that is presented in the first half adds to the visuals and story in a very unique way.

The second half of the album is where everything gets more hectic. From the aforementioned “THUNDRRR” to “CASPER,” the story post-interlude is nothing short of awe-inspiring, meaningful song-writing. “FORGONE” is the definition of grandiose and detail oriented music. Eight whole minutes of heartfelt, tear-jerking music about losing his motivation to keep going after his ship sinks and being isolated is enough to make a grown man cry. This is not to mention the other songs unrecognized, such as “THAT’S WHY,” “NATURAL CAUSES,” and “AT A TIME LIKE THIS.” All of the above tracks are amazing songs that reinforce the impact and narrative to the story at its core.

Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is genuinely amazing. The instrumentation alone is insane, and the attention to detail that Quadeca has put into the album is more than inspiring. These parts of the music along with the story just puts the final piece to the puzzle to a must-hear album.

From Me To You showed glimpses of Quadeca’s alternative-indie potential.

I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You captured that potential and spun it into a compelling, emotionally charged story.

Vanisher, Horizon Scraper shows Quadeca has completely mastered the potential he showed four years ago, and proves he is in a league of his own in his genre.

Lyrics: 10/10

Instrumentals: 10/10

Quality: 10/10

Listening Experience: 10/10

Final Rating: 10/10