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CD
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DC 780CD
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"It's 2023, and even the turn of century seems a long time ago now -- but oddly, Purling Hiss's guitar-band ethos feels ever more timeless, even as time accelerates and passes us in the outside lane. The Hiss aren't just a simple part of the tradition going back 50-odd years. Their DNA, pulsing in waves of punk and classic radio rock, grunge and slacker, is ineffably, re-singably music -- but their signature crushed guitar harmonics, fused with deep soulfulness, meld into something that cuts us with fresh heartbreak, an eternal recurrence that seems to be happening right now today, as it pours off the turntable and runs down the street. Drag On Girard, the first Purling Hiss album in six years, cruises through these states of mind and places in time -- dreams from the past and the future, careening lawlessly as they slide around loose on the road, an ever-present youth in their roll. As before, but with new twists, Mike Polizze and his gang let loose with the chaos and noise implied by their name, applying high-end splatter and slow-rolling low end to eight vehicles, running the gamut from gleaming pop gems to head-cleaning epic jams before they're done. The Polizze-on-Polizze prototype for Purling Hiss -- roiling, space-eating layers of guitars draped atop the muted thump of freedom rock, all of it squeezing through the spectrum in a mad dash to be heard -- was established way back in the Hissteria/Public Service Announcement days of the early teens. Now in a fourth album iteration of full-band Hiss, the genius of Mike Polizze's music, beyond the obvious -- his singing/screaming guitar leads, classic song construction and vivid hope-and-dream feels -- is the shifting layers of Hiss that make up the dynamic personalities of each album, from the major-label alternative rock sheen of Water On Mars to the slip-siding chaos of Weirdon and the shadowy 1980s club depths of High Bias. This time out, the colliding circles of time seem to have inspired both the songs and the band, and the sentiment-drenched mood explodes in a wild tangle of guitars that seem constantly about to overwhelm the room. One of the unique qualities of Drag On Girard is a specific lead-rhythm arrangement of the guitars, emitting the expected formidable roar while setting a certain type of rhythmic strut for the band. The two guitars style also trips power-pop impulses in the tunes, with sung-along harmony vocals that evoke classic collective magic and burnish the tunes one by one. Once this vibe's established, side two turns around and stretches out with the molten flow of Purling Hiss at their very most epic; couched within loose improvisatory structures, the title track and 'Shining Gilded Boulevard' play further with the yin/yang of nostalgia and truth as they trade places looking meditatively back to them old days and all their harshness and beauty..."
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LP
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DC 780LP
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LP version. "It's 2023, and even the turn of century seems a long time ago now -- but oddly, Purling Hiss's guitar-band ethos feels ever more timeless, even as time accelerates and passes us in the outside lane. The Hiss aren't just a simple part of the tradition going back 50-odd years. Their DNA, pulsing in waves of punk and classic radio rock, grunge and slacker, is ineffably, re-singably music -- but their signature crushed guitar harmonics, fused with deep soulfulness, meld into something that cuts us with fresh heartbreak, an eternal recurrence that seems to be happening right now today, as it pours off the turntable and runs down the street. Drag On Girard, the first Purling Hiss album in six years, cruises through these states of mind and places in time -- dreams from the past and the future, careening lawlessly as they slide around loose on the road, an ever-present youth in their roll. As before, but with new twists, Mike Polizze and his gang let loose with the chaos and noise implied by their name, applying high-end splatter and slow-rolling low end to eight vehicles, running the gamut from gleaming pop gems to head-cleaning epic jams before they're done. The Polizze-on-Polizze prototype for Purling Hiss -- roiling, space-eating layers of guitars draped atop the muted thump of freedom rock, all of it squeezing through the spectrum in a mad dash to be heard -- was established way back in the Hissteria/Public Service Announcement days of the early teens. Now in a fourth album iteration of full-band Hiss, the genius of Mike Polizze's music, beyond the obvious -- his singing/screaming guitar leads, classic song construction and vivid hope-and-dream feels -- is the shifting layers of Hiss that make up the dynamic personalities of each album, from the major-label alternative rock sheen of Water On Mars to the slip-siding chaos of Weirdon and the shadowy 1980s club depths of High Bias. This time out, the colliding circles of time seem to have inspired both the songs and the band, and the sentiment-drenched mood explodes in a wild tangle of guitars that seem constantly about to overwhelm the room. One of the unique qualities of Drag On Girard is a specific lead-rhythm arrangement of the guitars, emitting the expected formidable roar while setting a certain type of rhythmic strut for the band. The two guitars style also trips power-pop impulses in the tunes, with sung-along harmony vocals that evoke classic collective magic and burnish the tunes one by one. Once this vibe's established, side two turns around and stretches out with the molten flow of Purling Hiss at their very most epic; couched within loose improvisatory structures, the title track and 'Shining Gilded Boulevard' play further with the yin/yang of nostalgia and truth as they trade places looking meditatively back to them old days and all their harshness and beauty..."
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LP
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DC 590LP
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"Discerning ears will link Dizzy Polizzy to Public Service Announcement (recorded in 2007) since they were made more or less back-to-back, and we wouldn't disagree. Dizzy is kind of the more innocent sister to PSA, sweet songs and mini-ragers, a baby version of the squalor that would soon grow too much hair in all the right places. Dizzy Polizzy serves up the beginnings, going all the way back to 2004, building off solid, breakfast-of-champion prototype-sounds from the likes 'Halen and Neil Young and head-butting them in a Hissier direction. This album reissues the cassette compilation on LP for the first time ever, to tide Hiss-heads over while Purling Hiss works on their next LP that melds the evolutions of Water on Mars with the devolutions of the now-defined Dizzy Polizzy strain."
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Cassette
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DC 533CS
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CD
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DC 533CD
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"With Water on Mars, Purling Hiss have broken out of the basement, run through the bedroom and are out in the streets, blasting one of the great guitar albums in the past couple minutes. It's a tumble of hits and ragers, sewing together nine new Purling Hiss celebration laments out of their usual patches of distortion, singing melodies and unexpected production hoohah -- but this time the unexpected par t is how the guitars gleam so precisely as they pile upon each other, how they work alongside of the rhythm section rather than avalanching it. Water on Mars is Purling Hiss's first recording outside the fuzzy confines of Mike Polizze's inner rock utopia, where the first three albums and EP were constructed in solitude with a home-recording setup. Over the past couple years, Mike's been working with a band and fine-tuning new songwriting ideas while playing shows all over the place. Now, Purling Hiss projects their sounds and ideas onto a new platform, with a visceral and soulful presence, and there is a center to the Hiss maelstrom, with Polizze's guitars slugging, sizzling and spiraling their way around the rhythmic throb."
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LP
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DC 533LP
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LP
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RRTT 027LP
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"Well it's finally here. It's the new LP by Purling Hiss and it's called Hissteria. It's two sides of hi-energy psychedelic punk rock & roll that manages to weld Funhouse's dialed-in sleaze rhythms to the hungover excess of Hendrix at Woodstock. Or Ginn at Polliwog Park. It's full of clanging cymbals, howling vocals, fretboard heroics, and menacing vibes. Purling Hiss is the work of a well-mannered longhair named Mike Polizze, who is best known for his reckless shredding as the guitar player for Philadelphia's Birds Of Maya. Hissteria is a suitable soundtrack for zonked drives across the dead highways of the USA. Or for pre-dawn paranoid sessions as you pace back and forth in the kitchen trying to figure out just what the hell you're going to do, man. Or just crank it real loud when the party gets strange. Some people will love it and the rest of them can just go somewhere else and go fuck themselves."
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LP
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PERM 010LP
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Repressed. "Purling Hiss is one of Philly's Best! Purling Hiss is the side-project of Holy Mountain recording artists, Birds of Maya, guitarist Mike Pollize. Birds of Maya are a full-on psychedelic rock band from Philly. Apparently, Birds just aren't full-on enough to satisfy Pollize's far-out tendencies. On his debut solo record, Pollize plays bass, drums, and guitar, relentlessly, as if he's playing to save his life. This recording is so intense that the pressing plant told us they'd risk breaking their equipment if they cut the lacquers with the original master. We sent 'em a new master and it sounds great! For Fans Of: Birds of Maya, Earthless, Loop, High Rise, Les Rallizes Denudes, and lo-fi blown-out psych."
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