Papa M

As music technology gets cheaper and more accessible, it's increasingly easy for anyone to buy some toys, loop a few beats, add some trippy sound effects, and boom: post rock. It may sound technology heavy, but Dave Pajo's M projects (formerly M, Aerial M and now Papa M) are all about his guitar genius, not his gear. He lays down the groundwork of atmosphere and pulsing groove, and the lets it ferment and sweeten, adding elements until by the end of the song, you wonder how all of these seemingly disparate things ended up together. Unlike many new groups of this type, Pajo knows not to rest on his laurels — what ends up as an entire song from many other somnambulant instrumentalists is just the beginning in his restless hands. The result is less the walking dead epics that characterise the genre, but on tracks like "Plastic Energy Man," resemble more ambitious instrumental composers like the great Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Papa M by any other name would still tower over his contemporaries.