Berlin's André Pahl sits in the low-lit area of dance music where most DJs wouldn't dare chart. It's a place of experimental disco, voodoo percussion, cosmic electronics, and psychedelic drift. Where each weave like slow-burning cinema, coaxing bodies into various states of misrecognition.
The route begins in Düsseldorf, then bends through Amsterdam's design schools, Mexico City's streets, and Berlin's nocturns. Pahl graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy's graphic design department in 2003, then spent years in Mexico City before settling in Berlin in 2009. Outside the booth, he has worked as an interaction designer, graphic designer and creative programmer.
In mid-2000s Mexico City, Pahl became involved with Nuevos Ricos, the art-label project associated with Julian Lede and Carlos Amorales. Nuevos Ricos behaved like a performance apparatus, a prank economy, a graphic explosion, a satire of pop manufacture and a street-level machine for turning taste into trouble. Pahl's first DJing experiences took place in that world, at neighbourhood street parties and art happenings in packed subway stations.
On SoundCloud, Pahl's most recognisable body of work is his Safari mixes: pitched-down cinematic voyages through imaginary deserts, forests, oceans, galaxies and humid zones of psychic trespass. "Safari to Tatooine Desert," which Pahl has described as his first mix, appeared in 2013. "Safari II" followed for Overfitting Disco's fifth birthday. "Safari III" captured a Camp Cosmic 2013 set in Sweden. "Safari V," made for Overfitting Disco's seventh birthday, flirted with pulp adventure, staging travel as a dérive.
There is no grand release catalogue to inflate here, but follow the dates. You'll see that Pahl belongs to a network of underground venues, radio platforms and scene affinities rather than to a headline economy: a back-to-back with Alicia Carrera at Zürich's Zentralwäscherei, Sameheads in Berlin with Alexander Arpeggio, Listen Listen Sommerfest in Zempow, a Front Room Control Club date on May 15 alongside Fantastic Twins in the Berlin Room.
Pahl's gift is to make the club feel porous. A social hallucination where histories, cities, and tempos contaminate one another. He slows the pulse until the room twists into something transportive.
