Laniakea comprises Massimo Pupillo, of Italian experimentalists Zu, and Daniel O’Sullivan, whose multi-instrumental talents grace Ulver, Grumbling Fur and early Guapo. Together, this self-described “galactic gospel duo” make an awesome post-rock racket. Their album’s four lengthy pieces open out into a much larger maze of sound that is at once ancient and modern; it’s almost like eavesdropping on some arcane, occult ritual dedicated to summoning the very spirit of electricity itself.
On The Contagious Magick Of The Superabundance, undulating bass drones modulate constantly but glacially. The cavernous environment they gouge out of the air fills with jagged, slack-stringed descending bass lines and chattering high-end frequencies from which hymnal notes gently percolate their way toward a vanishing point of light. This is not ambient music. There’s simply too many provocative details applied to their vast sonic canvas. And just in case you think Laniakea take themselves too seriously, how can you not love a record whose instrumental credits feature “Theosophical girls” and “The feuding cats of Nuneaton”? Let’s hear it for them.
