"For A Period Of Time, I Wanna Just Look Inward": Ahadadream’s Ever Shifting Form

On his debut album, the London-based DJ and producer brings together the sounds, scenes and experiences that have shaped him. Speaking to Man About Town, he reflects on the formative club nights that shaped his sound, the importance of building creative communities, and returning to Pakistan with a record that puts his identity front and centre.

“I think the same way that I approach my curation of events is how I curated this album,” Ahadadream ponders. “Just think about the flow of feelings, and how that creates almost like an emotional arc or a story.”

It is a fitting way to describe P ★ K I, the long-awaited debut album from the London-based DJ and producer that sees him bring years of musical exploration into focus. Across 11 tracks, UK bass, grime, UK funky and global club music collide, with contributions from Skrillex, Priya Ragu, Eliza Rose, Capo Lee and Jolie P, alongside a posthumous appearance from Pakistani music legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It is a record with plenty of firepower, but the story behind it is more personal than any one dancefloor moment.

For Ahadadream, P ★ K I (pronounced Pee-Star-Kay-Eye) is about confronting the different ways his identity has been understood, both by himself and by the world around him. Born in Pakistan before moving to the UK at 12, he grew up navigating the distance between the two, eventually finding a sense of belonging in London's club scene. The album's title is a deliberate reclamation, taking a word he knew in one context growing up and reframing it through his own experience.

That personal connection is something he is keen to make clear. Rather than approaching the album as an exercise in establishing a signature sound, Ahadadream used the opportunity to explore the different influences that have followed him throughout his life. “I think the challenge with this album was leaning into a lot of collaboration, still maintaining that sonic identity, whilst it still feeling like a career and journey,” he says. “I just gave myself a bit more creative licence to just be like, it’s okay. I don’t have to be defined by one sound in a way. There are a lot of things that I do like, so let me just lean into them.”

Across the record, that openness becomes its defining feature. “Tere Bin” draws on the legacy of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, while “TAKA”, featuring Skrillex and Priya Ragu, brings together a different set of influences. “Put That Banger On Next” with Capo Lee, “Left / Right” with Jamakabi and Dismantle, and “Koi Si” with Ance each occupy their own corner of the album's sound. Rather than committing to one particular lane, Ahadadream lets the record move between them.

The album's focus track, “Koi Si”, is a particularly telling example. Working with Ance pushed Ahadadream towards UK garage, a genre he might previously have felt inclined to leave to other producers. This time, he was more interested in where the collaboration could lead. Ance supplied the drums and bass, leaving Ahadadream to develop the melodies, vocals and structure.

“It's interesting because, you know, I listened back to some of the first ever mixes that I made,” he tells me, reflecting on how much his approach has changed. “I recorded a mix on Virtual DJ, and that was my submission for an internet radio station called Nasty FM. And I found that the other day and I was like, you know what? This isn't actually that dissimilar in energy to what I do now.”

It is a reminder that, for all the changes in his sound, the instincts that first drew him towards music have remained remarkably consistent. Before the international bookings and major collaborations, there was a young Ahadadream discovering the possibilities of UK club music. Jungle, particularly tracks such as Shy FX and UK Apache’s 1995 classic “Original Nuttah”, opened the door, before London's bass scene pulled him further in.

One night that stayed with him was Butterz at Cable, the club night founded by Elijah and Skilliam. Its approach to bringing grime, garage and UK funky together left a lasting impression, as did the energy of a room where MCs, horns and whistles were part of the experience. “I feel like the way that they curated genres like UK funky, garage, grime, altogether, then like a seamless sequence along with MCs and like energy, you know, they give out like horns and whistles into the ground,” he recalls. “That was definitely really formative for me in terms of how I approach my curation of events.”

That influence is evident in the way he constructs a set, moving between different sounds without losing the thread that connects them. It also informed the sequencing of P ★ K I, which is designed to take the listener on a journey rather than remain in one place. The challenge, he explains, is working out what should come next, and how each transition changes the feeling of the whole.

The process of making the record was not always straightforward. Some tracks went through 15 or 20 different versions, as Ahadadream continued to adjust and reconsider the smallest details. For someone who has spent years honing his sound, learning when to stop became part of the creative process. “You can always continue to finesse forever, so you do have to just draw the line somewhere and just be like, okay, I have to call this done.”

The lesson, he says, was less about learning a particular production technique and more about changing his relationship with the music itself. Working with other artists meant letting go of the idea that every decision had to originate with him, and allowing the finished track to become something beyond his initial vision. “Having said all of that, is about just thinking about the final result and removing the self and the ego from it in a way,” he says. “I guess a lot of what I learned was more on a spiritual artistic level rather than specific production stuff.”

It is an approach that extends beyond the studio. In 2017, Ahadadream co-founded More Time with Sam Interface, establishing a label dedicated to forward-thinking club music with an international outlook. Alongside his work as a producer and DJ, he also helped spotlight emerging talent during his time behind the scenes at Boiler Room. His event series No ID would eventually develop into Dialled In, the South Asian arts and culture platform he co-founded in 2021.

Now in its fifth year, Dialled In has grown into a creative community spanning music, art and culture, with events and stages at Glastonbury, the V&A and beyond. The launch of Dialled In Records has extended that work into a new space, giving artists another route to connect with audiences and build their careers.

For Ahadadream, creating those opportunities is closely connected to his own experience of growing up without many people he could identify with in the music industry. His work has increasingly become about ensuring that the next generation has access to the platforms and communities that helped him find his feet.

That commitment was particularly apparent when he returned to Pakistan shortly before the album's release, collaborating with Lahore-based cultural collective Dosti to celebrate P ★ K I. Electronic music events can be difficult to stage in Pakistan, where club venues are scarce and events can face intervention from the authorities. Against that backdrop, bringing the music home carried a significance that went beyond the usual album launch.

“I would say the highlight of the summer feels like Primavera,” he tells me, before adding that he did not want to overlook the experience of returning to Pakistan. “The way that my music is received [in Pakistan] is bar none,” he says. “Especially because events aren't very regular there. There are no club venues that exist, and events get shut down by the police and things like that.”

For an artist whose music draws so heavily on his cultural heritage, the opportunity to celebrate the album in Lahore was particularly meaningful. It brought together the personal and professional sides of a career that has always moved between different worlds, offering a rare chance to experience the music in the place where part of its story began.

London, meanwhile, remains the city that has shaped him most as an artist. He speaks about its musical diversity with the enthusiasm of someone who continues to discover something new every weekend, from the underground nights that first inspired him to the radio stations that have provided a space for experimentation.

“I'd definitely rate London as the best music scene in the world for me,” he feels. “It's given me so much inspiration throughout, you know, the diversity of genres and sounds and genres that are, you know, totally born out of this place that end up, um, giving the world like, you know, becoming global.”

For Ahadadream, the city's radio culture is an especially important part of that ecosystem. From his early mixes for Nasty FM to appearances on stations including NTS and Rinse FM, radio has given him a place to explore music without worrying about whether it will work for a particular crowd. “Just having that space to just pull up and play music that is not necessarily to please any type of crowd,” he says. “It's just, you know, to explore.”

His advice to people who feel their own city is missing a music scene is characteristically straightforward: start a radio station. It is a reminder that the communities he values have to be built, often by people willing to put something on the line before they know what it might become. That DIY mentality has been part of his own career from the beginning, whether through his early events, his labels or his work championing South Asian artists.

The past few years have also brought a major shift in how he approaches music professionally. Despite having around 15 years of experience, Ahadadream has only been working full-time as an artist for the past three. Until then, he was balancing music with a job, fitting production, DJing and the wider demands of his career around everything else.

The transition has given him more freedom to concentrate on projects like P ★ K I, although the pace of his life has hardly slowed. Between touring, releases and the work surrounding Dialled In, there is always something happening. The album itself has been in development for so long that some of its tracks have already become familiar to audiences who have heard him play them live.

Releasing it has therefore been less about introducing an entirely new body of music than finally letting people hear the versions he has spent so long refining. The response has been particularly rewarding when it moves beyond online engagement and into conversations with listeners who tell him they have been playing the record repeatedly.

One of the summer's defining moments came at Primavera Sound. With the festival facing power problems and heavy rain, it was initially unclear whether Ahadadream would get to play at all. Then Massive Attack cancelled, opening up a slot for him to take the stage. After hours of uncertainty, his set became the first music to be played across the site, with festival goers gathering beneath their umbrellas.

It was an experience that underlined just how unpredictable live music can be. The conditions were hardly ideal, but the circumstances made the performance memorable. For Ahadadream, those moments are part of what makes playing out so rewarding: the connection between an artist, a crowd and a situation that will never happen in quite the same way again.

Now that P ★ K I is out in the world, his attention is already beginning to turn towards what comes next. After an album so heavily shaped by collaboration, he wants to spend time working alone, concentrating on sound design and building new sonic worlds before deciding what form the next project might take. “I want to also basically do the opposite of what I did for this album,” he says. “For a period of time, I wanna just look inward and focus on designing sound, then creating palettes of worlds and just conceptualising what the next project could be.”

For an artist who has spent years bringing people together, it sounds like a necessary change of pace. The next chapter will offer a different kind of challenge, one that starts with experimentation rather than a predetermined destination. There is also plenty of unreleased music waiting in the wings, alongside collaborations and remixes he has had to put aside while finishing the album.

For now, P ★ K I represents a moment when the different strands of Ahadadream's career meet. It is shaped by the music he grew up listening to, the city that gave him a creative home and the communities he has helped build along the way. Above all, it gives him the freedom to explore those influences without feeling that he has to choose between them.

After years of moving between different musical worlds, Ahadadream has made an album that sounds entirely comfortable doing the same. And with the next chapter already taking shape, he seems more interested than ever in seeing where that freedom can take him.