Ahadadream — P ★ K I: A Heavyweight Studio Statement Born From Pride, Belonging, and Bass

For over a decade, Ahad Elley has operated as one of the UK underground’s most relentless catalysts. Whether engineering volatile blends of UK funky, bass, and grime, building More Time into a heavyweight club imprint, or co-founding Dialled In to carve out essential spaces for South Asian artists, his footprint across dance music culture has been vast. Yet, until now, that energy existed primarily in the dancefloor’s fleeting present. With his debut long-player P ★ K I (pronounced Pee-Star-Kay-Eye), Elley consolidates his years as a selector into a sharply focused studio statement—one that reclaims a historically weaponised slur and reframes it as a vibrant celebration of heritage, identity, and personal pride.

Rather than over-intellectualising the album format, P ★ K I stays true to the physical language of the club. The 11-track LP moves with the raw momentum of a peak-time DJ set, constructed around punchy percussion, bruising sub-bass, and a sprawling, cross-continental network of collaborators. The opening pairing sets the tone immediately: "Tere Bin" anchors the iconic voice of Qawwali legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan over rolling soundsystem weight, before pivoting straight into the vocal-driven kinetic pressure of "Put That Banger On Next" alongside Capo Lee. It’s an approach that avoids subtlety in favor of direct, visceral impact, bridging legacy sounds with contemporary UK club dynamics.

Throughout the record, Elley constructs a meeting point for disparate global undergrounds. "Stupendously" brings together Miami duo INVT and French producer Lamsi alongside Jolie P, while the newly minted single "Koi Si" featuring Ance stands out as a triumphant, high-energy centerpiece that blends cultural celebration with pure dancefloor functionalism. Heavyweight moments like the Skrillex and Priya Ragu link-up "TAKA" and the raw, swinging garage pressure of "Hyper" featuring Eliza Rose demonstrate Elley’s skill in curating tracks that hit with stadium-sized resonance without stripping away the gritty edge of his UK club roots.

Crucially, P ★ K I lands as much as a cultural milestone as it does a musical one. From launching the album with a landmark event in Lahore alongside local collective Dosti, to bringing these sounds to global stages, Elley’s trajectory feels fully realised. For Australian audiences, the timing couldn't be better: following this release, Elley lands down under this November for a highly anticipated tour—hitting Vault in Perth (Nov 19), Howler in Melbourne (Nov 20), and a headline slot at Strawberry Fields Festival in Tocumwal (Nov 21). Unapologetic, celebratory, and engineered purely for movement, P ★ K I marks the definitive arrival of an artist who has stopped shrinking his identity and started using it to reshape the dancefloor entirely.

P ★ K I  is out now everywhere