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The first time I met Acid Pauli, I didn’t know it. I was in search of a lighter outside of the Salon Zur Wilden Renate, a bar in
Berlin. It was quite late (or early, depending on how you look at it). I had been living in Germany for less than a week. I approached a man that had been moving some equipment nearby. He didn’t smoke, he explained, but he produced a book of matches—- almost out of thin air. He had excited, Romanesque features that threatened to overwhelm his face as he spoke. He introduced himself as Martin. I moved to Berlin after quitting my job as a journalist covering culture for an inconsequential (albeit progressive) Middle Eastern magazine. Days after I left the region, the first protests began in Tunisia. I visited Renate that week because Nicolas Jaar recommended it when we met in London around Christmas time. When I mentioned that I might move to Germany, he brought up Acid Pauli-- which is how I first found out about his Johnny Cash interpretation, “I See a Darkness,” and some of his other projects with The Notwist. A few nights later, I returned to Renate, observing from afar as Acid gently wrangled the dance floor. His set activated a space that was both free flowing and eclectic, the opposite of what I had expected (however ignorantly) to find in Berlin. I tracked Acid down after he finished playing and introduced myself properly this time. Eventually, he explained that he had just completed an album for Clown & Sunset. He called it Mst. After pleading with him to let me listen, he handed over a miniature mirror that doubled as a USB drive. It was an appropriate medium for an album that acts reflexively. Each of the nine tracks coaxes your attention, and then plays with it like the hall of mirrors in a funhouse. Songs accelerate or breakdown without warning, before leaping right back into the rhythm or alternating into a new one. Acid Pauli’s voice never appears, and so you substitute your own internal monologue—- whether you’re waltzing to (La voz) tan tierna” or weeping to “Eulogy to Eunice.” I saw Acid Pauli a handful more times that spring before he began touring with Nico. And despite our conversations about the album, it was not until months later that I realized Acid isn’t trying to tell stories with his work. His aim is more holistic than that. Mst extends the atmospherics past the dance floor, refracting the idiosyncrasies of our existence back into our everyday lives.