I’ve been a huge fan of Tree and his collaborators for awhile now. Otherwise known as Oliver Nickell, the young musician has made quite a home out of San Francisco truly pushing the underground movement on the West Coast.

Recently Nickell and his group of multimedia artists have dropped a free 9-track EP titled, Splitting Branches. It features some of the singles he’s released along the way and some new collaborations as well. What I love most is his non-traditional approach with creating music. It goes beyond simply finding various kitchen utensils to replace minor percussion, the production and layering is just completely on point.

I really enjoy the eerie, slow burner vibe in the opening track, “People,” which also has a fabulous finger-picking riff. It almost sounds like something straight out of Donnie Darko.  Other tracks like, “Artemecia,” blends female/male vocals wonderfully alongside electronic blips and bloops. I also dig the song, “From Reds to Blues,” which offers a spacey-chillwave sound over looping vocals. The entire track-listing is a diverse and experimental mix of works with various artists, it’s certainly one for the headphones with the amount of the layered details and textures.

Stream Splitting Branches below and be sure to nab your own copy here.

Incoming search terms:

• Branch split headphones
• tree & Shelf Nunny — This is Separation
• tree collaborations
• universal by oliver \tree\ nickel