Pioneer 11: “Grumpy Goomba”

Pioneer 11 is a personified love letter to space. Named after NASA’s space probe that’s spent the last two decades aimlessly floating about space with zero contact with humanity, duo Alex Hastings and Bryan Gomez describe themselves in the same fashion when creating music. The entire metaphor of space, the unknown, and the acceptance over our limited human control translates seamlessly into their music that seems to pull you into the astral drift along with them.

Rooted with sounds recalling one of Nintendo’s most legendary subterranean gaming levels, “Grumpy Goomba” balances those synth tricks with sophisticated, gravity-defying tones and plenty of ray gun bleep-bloops.  Sharing centerstage is a guitar riff that relies more on the psychedelic blending of each note’s resonance than its strike, while the ear recognizes the silences in between as an equally important thread of the song’s celestial fabric.

“Grumpy Goomba” appears on Gravitorium, out later this year via POW Recordings.

-Taylor Wallace

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