“I wanted this record to be an embodiment of my DJ sets, which are a reflection of my life experiences,” Ahadadream tells Apple Music. “It’s the culmination of my moving from Pakistan to the UK at 12 and discovering a love of UK club sounds like garage, grime, and UK funky. It all comes full circle.” Over the past decade, the producer and DJ born Ahad Elley has been tearing up dance floors with his signature blends of hard-hitting percussion, Indian classical samples, and UK bassweight. Collaborating with the likes of Skrillex and rapper Raf-Saperra, as well as co-founding the British Asian dance collective Dialled In, Ahadadream has spearheaded a new diaspora-focused sound for UK electronic music. On his debut album—the provocatively titled P ★ K I—Ahadadream channels these frenetic experiences into a musical encapsulation of his life to date. From the Sufi vocal samples of opener “Tere Bin” to the dance-floor egalitarianism of “Make Space,” rave references of “Left / Right,” and viral explosion of Skrillex feature “TAKA,” the album brings the chaotic energy of his show straight to listeners’ ears. “This is a club-focused, dance-floor album through and through,” he says. “It’s been road tested during my sets for the last three years, and it’s designed to make you move.” Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. “Tere Bin” (with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) “When I was preparing for my Boiler Room set in 2023, this song by [Sufi singer] Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan came on shuffle, and I thought it would be amazing as an intro. It’s slow, though, so I had to transition it into the tempo I usually mix at by mashing it up with a song by Dismantle I had previously released on my label, More Time. It got a huge reaction online, and I thought it would be amazing for people to now press play on the album and be reminded of the mix I’m best known for. It doubles down on the theme that this record is one of my sets.” “Put That Banger on Next” (with Capo Lee) “I’ve always enjoyed working with MCs since grime was a huge part of my musical upbringing. I’ve known Capo for ages and watched his freestyles, but I wanted to bring out a different side to him on this track by making his vocals looped into a dance music concept with UK funky and gqom influences. The instrumental has everything I want in the album: joy and celebration.” “Make Space” “I was sitting at home and this vocal just came to me. I was thinking about when you’re in a club and it gets a bit too laddy and you need more feminine and queer energy on the dance floor. I’ve been known to get on the mic in the past and say something like the vocal for this track to the crowd. I wanted to shout out all the different groups that make up the multicultural London I love.” “Sea” (with INVT) “This was a collaboration with INVT, an amazing duo of producers from Miami. I respect their groovy but restrained style, and I’ve always been interested in the Latin house Miami sound, so we linked up in a studio in London and ‘Sea’ happened really quickly—they’re brothers and it’s like they work with the same mind. I added the dhol to make it a mashup of Latin club music and South Asian music. When I was making the shortlist for the album and I played this one to people, everyone was unanimous that it should be on the record.” “Stupendously” (with Jolie P and Lamsi) “Jolie P is an up-and-coming artist I’ve had my eye on for a while because she has such amazing energy and is such a great DJ. I really vibed with what she was doing, and since she can both sing and rap, I wanted to get it all on one track. I got her to sing before the drop and then, on the drop, I had her go crazy and MC. I had the rough skeleton of the track and then took it to the producer Lamsi and he had another idea that he merged the stems with, which created a dubby reggae breakdown in the middle. That ends up being a nod to Notting Hill Carnival and growing up in London.” “Stage” (with Sidd) “Sidd is a sick producer from Karachi who I linked up with when I went there for the first Boiler Room that happened in Pakistan in 2022. He’s so talented in his production, and I like to do a long dramatic buildup made from percussion in my sets, so this song copies that in an album setting. I’ve been playing it out a lot and it’s been going down so well.” “Hyper” (with Eliza Rose) “I’ve always been a fan of Eliza Rose, and so when it came to the album, we went into the studio together and the energy flowed really well. We came out with two tracks, one which is more jungle and the other which is ‘Hyper.’ The challenge was how to transition from something quite smooth and sexy to my style of brash drums. It took me a while to do and I agonized over it for a long time, but hopefully we picked the right version of it here.” “Left / Right” (with Dismantle and Jamakabi) “Dismantle has been a huge influence ever since I booked him for the club nights I used to run at university. I’ve always loved his combination of bass and percussive grooves, and for ‘Left / Right,’ I had one instrumental and he had another and we merged them together. You can hear it in the bouncy, percussive part that then switches into breakbeats. The finishing element was an a cappella that Jamakabi sent over that worked perfectly over the top. This gets a mad reaction in the set with lots of reloads.” “Koi Si” (with ance.) “I made ‘Koi Si’ quite a while ago when I was playing an edit of ‘Brighter Days’ by the producer ance. a lot in my sets. I really liked his sound, so I got him to send me some drum loops and bass samples, and then I had the idea to use the emotional vocal from the [Punjabi] song ‘Koi Si’ [by Afsana Khan and Nirmaan], which I had also been listening to a lot at the time. The challenge was getting the sample cleared, and that took a long time but I’m so glad we made it in the end.” “Bapbapbap” “This is one of the only songs on the album that isn’t a collaboration—I wanted to make sure there was at least one. It’s an homage to my early production years as it sounds like something I would have put out on More Time. It acts as a bridge to that world and allows the album to come full circle through my musical journey so far.” “TAKA” (with Skrillex and Priya Ragu) “I first met Skrillex in 2019, and when the COVID lockdowns hit the following year, we had a Zoom call and chatted for an hour. I ended up sending him a rough sketch for ‘TAKA,’ and he started working on it in Ableton right away. In 2021, he then came to the first ever Dialled In event and we went into the studio with Priya Ragu. The song was in development for a long time but when it was revealed to the world during my 2023 Boiler Room, it went totally viral. It’s the song that has changed my life, and since the record is telling a story, I had to include it as the closing track.”