Futureproofing #11: A Ramadanman Retrospective
A look at David Kennedy's pre-Pearson Sound history, plus reviews of Jubilee, Skeleten and more.
Edited by Tom Gledhill.
Once upon a time, the producer otherwise known as Pearson Sound was called Ramadanman. It seems almost hard to believe today—and I wonder if David Kennedy would prefer to forget the name—but that strange alias also produced some of the most exciting UK dance music of the post-dubstep era.
I'll never forget the first time I heard "Don't Change For Me." It feels like jungle turned inside-out, then rewired into a patchwork of trends from that time: dubstep, broken house, hints of techno, all with gibberish sampled vocals that squiggle and squirm like they're being squeezed through a sieve.
Though it's technically not jungle or drum & bass, "Don't Change For Me" was the apotheosis of the style's inversion of time and human rhythm. The best jungle stretches the fabric of speed and sound, and that's what Kennedy does here. On headphones it sounds like breaks are raining down all around you, speeding up and slowing at random. On a system the bass goes to work, knocking you off centre right into those jagged shards of percussion.
Here are some things I wrote about it in 2010:
"Taking an endless stream of breaks in both hands and wrenching them so far off its axis that listening to it makes you feel like you’re standing on a tilting floor, like he’s using the black secret technology to shake the entire planet."
"A little cartoonish, yes, and it was only exaggerated when typical Kennedy organs slammed into the track, weighing it down at the sides so heavily that the breaks shot down steep inclines… A blissful mess overflowing with percussion."
This music is easy to be hyperbolic about—and I sure was hyperbolic in 2010 in general—but it's also hard to deny it. "Don't Change For Me" was the closer on Ramadanman's self-titled EP, which was arguably the defining release of 2010, of post-dubstep, and of Hessle Audio (the label Kennedy still runs with Ben UFO and Pangaea). The rest of the tracks still sound downright ridiculous.
The way "Tumble" feels like David Kennedy randomly flipping through percussion presets on a drum machine emulator—lashed occasionally by big, bassy laser beams? Kind of stupid, but completely awesome. How "No Swing" is just a Pev-style swung beat floating in midair until a demented church organ comes in? OK. The Santa's-sleigh-bells-and-LFO wobble combo of the punishing "A Couple More Years?" The creepy, inhuman vocal on "I Beg You," or the way the drums sound like they're slapping you in the face, top-heavy but never tinny?
In light of how what was known as "bass music" streamlined into house music after 2010, Ramadanman stands out for its weirdness—for an insistent functionality that shouldn't work but somehow, out of sheer ingenuity, does. This rhythmic flex was something that Kennedy was working towards for a long time. His earlier works, like the excellent and underrated "Carla," worked with a more familiar dubstep rhythm, tapping into the deep wells of inaudible sub first excavated by Digital Mystikz and Loefah, then making them sound colorful and iridescent, which would become Kennedy's trademark.
You can hear his brain working in real time from "Carla" forwards, reducing the music down to the bare essentials on Blimey before building back up in strange new ways on "Dayrider," "Humber" and "Revenue." Brief detours into dub techno (with Appleblim) and house (with Midland) did little to stall his launch into the stratosphere, which started with Ramadanman, blasted off with "Glut" and then finally hitting outer space with "Work Them," a genius stroke of footwork-dubstep fusion that works itself into a tizzy before Kennedy brings it down with the velvet curtain of synth that would define the act he abandoned Ramadanman for: Pearson Sound. (Also, Maurice Donovan, but we don't have to talk about that one.)
Somehow, the Pearson Sound tracks that followed—like the drop-dead gorgeous "Blanked," "Untitled," "REM"—feel much nearer to our familiar Earth than the alien remoteness of Ramadanman. Though Kennedy's music remains resolutely individual, it developed something of a pattern: those kind of tics someone retains, or sometimes sharpens, when they mature into a capital-A Artist. Ramadanman, instead, is raw(madanman). It's a keen mix of hunger and blow-it-all-up revisionism that can only happen once in a career, or once in a scene. It's hard to overstate how exciting it was to witness this all happen—an article I wrote for Little White Earbuds about the defining artists of 2010 touches on this—though some of that is likely down to age, as I was approximately 19 to 21 when this all unfolded. But I can also attest, listening to the discography from beginning to end, that it still sounds exciting, and that the best Ramadanman tracks are gloriously unpredictable no matter how well you know them.
Weekly Listening
Traxman - Da Mind Of Traxman Vol. 3 [Planet Mu, 2025]
If last year's Heavee album blazed a new path for footwork, then Traxman's latest is like repaving a familiar street. Put together (and mixed down) by footwork admirer Sinjin Hawke, the first thing to notice about Da Mind Of Traxman Vol. 3 is the sound: this is big, beefy, and detailed, trading some of the rawness of Traxman's older work for reinforced sonic power. Not that it's completely polished—tracks like the Carly Simon-sampling "I Bet U Think This Track Is About U!!" retain the feverish feeling of early footwork, jamming a vocal sample with too many syllables into a confined space and slamming it over and over again. But it's hard not to marvel at the bassline of the opening track "Kill Da DJ," or the bittersweet sparkle of "It Never Rains." There are fierce battle tracks and DJ Rashad romantic swoons ("We Can Go"), and the album is varied enough to stay fresh through all 15 tracks. Notice that it's Vol. 3—this is an album perfected through time and practice, and a helpful outside editor. So many of the best footwork albums have been released on Planet Mu, and Da Mind Of Traxman Vol. 3 slots right in, the latest in a string of releases that makes the genre feel as exciting as it felt for us outsiders back in 2010.
Darkness Darkness - Animation [A Visiting Link, 2025]
I don't know anything about A Visiting Link, but I do know that this record fucks. Deep, dark and vaguely rusted dub techno, Animation presents the other side of the genre, one that's becoming more common in recent years: where the surfaces aren't gleaming and polished, but instead uneven and jagged—like the bracing drum sounds on the opening title track, which drags on (gloriously) for almost 12 minutes. The almost as lengthy "Beauty Of The World" is like an early Werk Discs record played at half speed, all tentative percussion, blasts of synth and chord progressions that never resolve. These tracks are totems to zone out to, interspersed with odd experiments like the beautiful-but-only-1-minute long "End," the lovely "Empresszzzz"—whose high-pass filtered synths make it sound like dub techno with a sinus infection—and "Exp Sample," which plays with a choral pad so tortuously slowly that it makes even the barest hint of melody feel like a desert oasis. This is one of the most impressive records I've heard in 2025.
Jubilee - JUMP START [Magic City, 2025]
Jubilee is one of the best DJs in the USA, and her productions distill her appeal into three-minute, club-ready chunks. She pulls on different threads of American dance music and puts them through a loom, and out come compact, utilitarian patchworks. "RIGHT TURN ON RED" is a monster of a breaks tune with over-the-top LFO wobbles, while "GoGoGoGO!" sounds like drum & bass infused with the spirit of Miami bass. I always wish Jubilee releases were a bit longer, but it's hard to complain when the music is this tight.
Blacksea Não Maya - Despertar [Príncipe, 2025]
Now just DJ Kolt solo, the former trio Blacksea Não Maya returns to Príncipe with a brief album that's as focused as it is boundary-pushing. Take "Tolobasco," which has a drunken waltz of a beat with midrange real estate fought over by a synth guitar, wiggly pitch-bent keys and vocal grunts. It holds together like glasses fixed with sellotape, which is part of this music's charm—it would feel amateurish if it weren't so expertly done. Things get more fucked-up from there, like the tropical-vacation-gone-wrong vibe of "Kirraxo" (evil steel drums!) or "BALEBALE," which sounds like a clumsy rock band (complete with crunchy distorted synth guitar) trying to follow the lead of a drummer too drunk to know what's going on.
Skeleten - Mentalized [2MR, 2025]
Skeleten is kind of like what would happen if Beat Happening grew up on Caribou. His baritone voice and matter-of-fact enunciation kind of clashes with the electronic instrumentation, but once you get used to it, everything locks into place. His second album—and first for electronic crossover mainstay label 2MR—is full of wryly funny lyrics and bubbling-under beats. Some choice phrases: "These people started as a dream / Just like humans" over a funky guitar-and-bongos beat that sounds like The Beta Band, the whispered "what the fuck" at the beginning of "Deep Scene," "Disband the police / keep a good gaze on me / Camera scope / [James Brown guitar lick]." (I could do without "violence is Viagra," though.") If you only listen to one song, make it "Crack In The Shell," whose slightly concerned (but still effortless) tone and Tango In The Night soundscape nicely sums up the album.
If you’ve made this far, feel free to send me your music at andrewryce (at) gmail (dot) com!