The Smoking Trees

Los Angeles-based outfit The Smoking Trees draws from the hallucinatory psychedelic era of the sixties, incorporating ornate baroque pop tunes and echoey production techniques into their airy compositions. Founding duo Martin Nunez, known as Sir Psych, and Al Rivera, who goes by L.A. AL, mulled over the concept extensively prior to committing and putting out their initial full-length Acetate during 2013. Following the 2015 release TST, Rivera stepped away once more, yet Nunez persisted in crafting luminous psych-pop records such as The Adventure Continues in 2018.

The pair first assembled the project in 2001 while employed at Tower Records, with Nunez—a prolific hip-hop producer, multi-instrumentalist, and record collector—joining Rivera, a pivotal figure in shaping the East L.A. underground punk scene. Throughout the early 2000s they tracked material at home using four-track equipment while refining their approach. Career demands and family responsibilities eventually pulled them in separate directions until they reunited in 2011 to concentrate on the band, which led Burger Records to issue the debut album Acetate two years afterward. Their follow-up studio effort, TST, surfaced in summer 2015 and was warmly received by admirers of dreamy, sun-soaked psych-pop. Material that later became The Archer and the Bull originated during those same TST sessions; once Rivera departed again, Sir Psych completed the project independently by layering additional parts and finalizing the mixes. Burger Records put out the resulting album in May 2016. Nunez continued alone, and the third Smoking Trees long-player, The Adventure Continues, appeared in 2018.