Garcia Peoples / Chris Forsyth / Purling Hiss

Garcia Peoples

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US rock band from Rutherford, New Jersey. Originally a quartet featuring Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki on guitars, Cesar Arakaki on drums, and Derek Spaldo on bass, the group has expanded to a quintet by adding PG Six on keyboards.

Chris Forsyth

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Guitarist/songwriter Chris Forsyth got his start in Brooklyn's experimental circles in the early 2000s and slowly grew into a masterful technical player. As the bandleader of Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band, he composed mostly instrumental pieces that channeled both the psychedelic jamming of the Grateful Dead and the precision of art-punk guitar acts like Television. Prolific recorded output made for an ever-evolving sound on both solo albums and Solar Motel standouts like 2014's Intensity Ghost.

Forsyth grew up in the New Jersey suburbs, relocating to Brooklyn in the mid-'90s and finding a place in New York's experimental and improvisational scenes. He also played solo, making connections with improv figures like Derek Bailey and Loren Connors, as well as studying guitar under the tutelage of former Television member Richard Lloyd.

Purling Hiss

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Philadelphia guitarist and songwriter Mike Polizze first appeared under the name Purling Hiss in 2009 with a self-released, self-titled CD-R. He played all the instruments and recorded the six fuzzy, corrosive pop songs himself at home as a recording-only project. Formerly playing in the heavy psych group Birds of Maya, Polizze played in and around the Philly indie scene, sharing stages with contemporaries like Kurt Vile and the War on Drugs while working on Purling Hiss songs in his basement studio. Following his debut recordings, Polizze went on to release records with various indie labels, including 2010's Public Service Announcement on Woodsist Records, 2011's Lounge Lizards EP on Mexican Summer, and a handful of other cassette and EP releases. In 2013, Polizze expanded Purling Hiss into a power trio, and the newly collaborative three-piece entered a proper studio to record Water on Mars. The album's distorted, introspective tunes were more pop-oriented than anything the band had done before, and the album was released in 2013 on Drag City. The next year, while fans waited for a new album, Drag City reissued the early tour CD Dizzy Polizzy on vinyl, going as far back into Polizze's archive as possible for songs recorded between 2004 and 2009, a time just predating Purling Hiss. A proper follow-up to Water on Mars dropped in the fall of 2014 in the form of Weirdon. That record continued the band's lovingly bent appropriation of '90s grunge and melodic slacker pop. High Bias, another bracing set of noisy but melodic rock, was released by Drag City in 2016.