Premiere: Pioneer 11, ‘Grumpy Goomba’
Kevin Bronson on
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Alex Hastings and Bryan Gomez named their musical project Pioneer 11 after the space probe that NASA launched in 1973, which was the first to reach the planet Saturn. The last communication with the probe was in 1995, so we imagine it’s out there in interstellar bliss, floating and floating … not unlike “Grumpy Goomba,” the first song from the L.A. duo’s forthcoming full-length, “Gravitorium.” Hastings and Gomez, who collaborated with U.K. producer Paul White (Danny Brown, Open Mike Eagle) in 2015 on a three-song EP with the tongue-twisting title “Phosphorous Philosophers,” think of their project as an existential crisis sent into orbit. Radiohead, Four Tet, Caribou and even Flying Lotus might be sonic reference points, and with guitar riffs going sideways and the duo’s control panel spitting out beats, synths and noise, the effect is spooky, or at least cognitively dissonant in a very cool way. “Gravitorium” will be out in early 2017 via POW Recordings, the newly minted label from the music website Passion of the Weiss. Our question is: Where was this music when Matt Damon needed it in “The Martian?”
||| Stream: “Grumpy Goomba”
||| Also: Stream “Good Ole Urns”
||| Live: Pioneer 11 perform Dec. 13 at the Echo as part of a POW Recordings showcase that features Chester Watson, Natia, Jordan Raff, Ness Nite and more. Tickets.
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[…] Just where we left the duo of Alex Hastings and Bryan Gomez a couple years back, winking about a “Grumpy Goomba” from a solar system tilted off its axis. Pioneer 11 have spent the ensuing months putting the wraps […]