David Pajo started out with Maurice (with Walford) and then went on to cofound Slint with McMahon (vocals, 2nd guitar) and Walford (drums, vocals), playing lead guitar. Like Walford, his early playing demonstrated his technical ability (see Tweez), but as McMahon's and Walford's vision for Slint became starker, darker, and... hmmm... spiderlike, so did Pajo's style. On Spiderland, you can recognize Pajo's guitar as the often more technical one with a colder tone than McMahon's, except on "Don, Aman" on which Walford plays lead and Pajo is 2nd guitar. the attention to detail on Spiderland is to the point that McMahon would stroke up while Pajo would stroke down to create fuller chords as well as a kind of reverb effect and a sound of separation (for example). Slint split after McMahon left and Pajo joined Tortoise, recording for the Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT sessions; he shared guitar duties with the newly-joined Jeff Parker during the TNT sessions, and I'm not positive whose riffs are whose, but the main riff on the title track, "The Equator", "The Suspension Bridge at Iguazu Falls", "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven," and "Everglade" are all obviously his style. At this point, Pajo adopted a warmer tone for his guitar but usually retained his machine-like playing style from Slint, usually repeating riffs with minor variations. His work with Slint and Tortoise alone, two of the most influential, if not among the best (mine and many's favorite) musicians of the '90s, is enough credentials to pay his style consideration. Having left Tortoise before touring for TNT, Pajo continued to work for his various solo projects (Aerial M, Papa M, and Pajo), as well as record on Fight Songs for The For Carnation, Royal Trux's 3-song EP, and Zwan's Mary Star of the Sea. Pajo's style is characterized as stark, technical, extreme (either delicate picking or heavy riffs), and, most of all, machine-like repetition with minor variation, kind of like a living version of Eno's Discreet Music.
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