Premiere: Pioneer 11, ‘I Hope I Haven’t Overstayed My Welcome’

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Pioneer 11
Pioneer 11

Earth to Pioneer 11, earth to Pioneer 11, come in please …

Ah, there you guys are. 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 on their debut full-length “Gravitorium,” out next week via POW Recordings.

If much of what’s called psychedelic pop inspires stargazing or imagines galaxies far, far away, “Gravitorium” is music that’s truly lost in space — beholden more to the duo’s whims and adroitness at melding guitar and bass with electronic effects than any single sonic thread. In that way, Pioneer 11, named for the NASA space probe launched in 1973, is true to its name.

Hastings and Gomez cite inspirations ranging from ’90s hip-hop to the L.A. beat scene to funk, classic rock and EDM, and fans of contemporary experimentalists such as Radiohead, Four Tet, Flying Lotus and Caribou are likely to embrace Pioneer 11’s journey, at least in spirit.

On the funk tip comes the new song “I Hope I Haven’t Overstayed My Welcome,” clawing its way out of the spaceship on a peripatetic bass line and scratchy guitar. As the song spirals weightlessly into its closing jam, you feel just as the actual Pioneer 11 did, all alone in space for 22 years, a sole witness to spectacular beauty, never overstaying its welcome.

||| Stream: “I Hope I Haven’t Overstayed My Welcome”

||| Also: Stream “Squishy Sunbeam”

||| Previously: “Grumpy Goomba”