David Pajo

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David Pajo is an alternative rock musician. However, even this classification is constraining, as he has over the course of his life played such a wide variety of music, only loosely fitting into genres such as: hardcore, math-rock, post-rock, electronica, folk, and even indie-pop. Though a multi-instrumentalist (playing guitar, bass, banjo, drums, and possibly many more instruments), he is best known for his guitar work.

In his early years he played with three Louisville hardcore and hardcore-inflected bands. He got his start as guitarist for Maurice, but he first recorded with Solution Unknown. He rose to prominence, however, for work with the influential math-rock band Slint. Since its breakup, he has seldom held positions in other bands for very long, moving from one to the other quite often. As a result he has contributed to many lineups, playing and recording with Will Oldham, The For Carnation, Tortoise, Stereolab, Royal Trux, King Kong, Bush League, Zwan, and Peggy Honeywell. He has also released music as a solo artist using various monikers, as Aerial M, M, and most notably, Papa M. Among his many 7" and splits with various bands, he has released (as Aerial M) 1997's Aerial M, and (as Papa M) 1999's Live From A Shark Cage, 2001's Whatever, Mortal, and 2003's Hole Of Burning Alms. In February and March of 2005 he joined his old friends from Slint, Britt Walford and Brian McMahan, for a reunion tour, and in April released his first solo album not bearing a pseudonym, simply entitled Pajo.

Around the middle of 2005, he helped to form the band Dead Child, with Todd Cook (from Shipping News, Retsin, The For Carnation, and Aerial M - and was also the guitar player on the 2005 Slint reunion tour), Michael McMahan (from The For Carnation, Starkiller, and Phantom Family Halo - and who also joined Slint on the reunion tour), and Tony Bailey (from Anomoanon, The Party Girls, Verktum, and Aerial M). More details on this band will follow as the music is released.