Chris Forsyth

Chris Forsyth launched his path as a guitarist and songwriter amid Brooklyn's experimental music community in the opening years of the 2000s before maturing into a technically commanding performer. Leading Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band, he wrote largely instrumental works that blended the Grateful Dead's psychedelic improvisation with the exactitude of art-punk guitar ensembles such as Television. His abundant discography produced a continually shifting style across solo projects and key Solar Motel releases, among them 2014's Intensity Ghost.

Raised in New Jersey suburbs, he relocated to Brooklyn in the mid-1990s and entered New York's experimental and improvisational circles. Performing solo, he connected with improvisers including Derek Bailey and Loren Connors while studying guitar with former Television member Richard Lloyd.

After co-founding the alternative folk outfit Peeesseye in 2002, he joined Phantom Limb & Bison and contributed improvisational appearances to experimental artists throughout Brooklyn. His collaborators encompass guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, vocalist Meg Baird, and trumpeter Nate Wooley. Following a decade of releases on Creative Sources, Utech, Archive, Unframed, Pax Recordings, and his own Evolving Ear, 2011's Paranoid Cat appeared on Family Vineyard. He followed it in 2012 with the duet Early Astral alongside sound artist and composer Koen Holtkamp, also half of Mountains, issued by Blackest Rainbow.

Living in Philadelphia in 2013, he issued two albums. Kenzo Deluxe came first on Northern Spy; with minimal overdubs, it functioned as a solo jam-band record. Solar Motel arrived in October on Paradise of Bachelors, tracing the guitar's lineage from Jerry Garcia to Tom Verlaine. Here he worked with drummer Mike Pride, keyboardist Shawn Edward Hansen, and electric bassist Peter Kerin.

The band format broadened his scope. As Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band they released Solar Live 11.15.13 on Electric Ragtime in April 2014. He also issued the limited-edition duet Third with trumpeter Wooley. After Pride exited, Forsyth, Hansen, and Kerin recruited drummer Steven Urgo and second guitarist Paul Sukeena for Intensity Ghost, which No Quarter released in October. A year later came Island, another duet with Holtkamp, on Trouble in Mind. A new Solar Motel lineup featuring drummer Ray Kubian and guitarist Nick Millevoi recorded the double album The Rarity of Experience, issued by No Quarter in March 2016. Forsyth and the group toured extensively through the U.S. and Europe before channeling those performances into Dreaming in the Non-Dream, released in late summer 2017. The album adopted a tighter focus that let trance-like, nearly Motorik rhythms and riffs expand gradually in a neo-psych vein; even with two tracks surpassing 11 minutes it retained concision while the band remained on the road. In 2019 the epic double album All Time Present appeared as a solo release. Clocking in over an hour, the eight-song set included vocals by Forsyth on several tracks as well as by Philly songwriter Rosali Middleman.