Drew Daniel of Matmos once said something to the effect of Dave Pajobeing one of those people whose musical and artistic talents are justbeyond comprehension, to the point that can make a number of peoplejealous. Pajo's guitar talents can be heard from releases stretchingback to the late 1980s with Slint (even earlier with more obscurebands' records that can probably not be located anywhere), continuingon into the 1990s with King Kong, Palace, Tortoise, and appearanceswith Stereolab, Royal Trux, and For Carnation live. In 1995, hereleased something as M, then M is the Thirteenth Letter, then AerialM, before settling on Papa M. It's important to note that recordingscollected here does not compile -the definitive singles collection- (itwould span more than three discs with today's technology), however, itdoes form a strong album of coherent material that can be listened topretty much within the catalogue of his first three releases throughDrag City: Aerial M, Post Global Music, and Live from a Shark Cage.In addition, it does sort of close the book on the musical style whichhas come to pass for him: the music is instrumental, and slowly, overtime, it evolves as Pajo gets more comfortable working with newelements of compositional style, instrumentation, and recordingtechnique. Opening with the first couple 7" singles, the group is avery basic guitar/bass/drums lineup. It's not until track five,"Mountains Have Ears," that Pajo begins to employ drum machines andcomputer recording techniques. While it gets more electronic, Pajocombats it with more traditional routes: following another mildlyelectronic piece "Vivea" is "Last Caress," a Misfits cover which isprobably the first release with Dave on the microphone. (This songwasn't the beginning of his vocal career as it wasn't until after thealbum Live from a Shark Cage that Pajo began to sing on nearly everything.) Some of the more obscure recordings include the 13+ minute Travels in Constantstrack, previously available only by subscription to the TemporaryResidence series and two Christmas singles only available to luckypeople on Drag City's mailing lists—one of them being the 16+ minutecover of "Turn, Turn, Turn," where the band (now more than just Dave)just planned to play until the four-track tape ran out. Speaking toPajo, there are considerations in releasing more singles collections inthe future, but, for now, for those who missed these things the firsttime around, your second chance to enjoy these awesome tunes hasarrived. The compilation is available now if you see him on tour and ina couple weeks if you can't get out or the tour comes nowhere near you.samples:
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