Hot Since 82 returns with 'Obsessions', his first album in six years, led by a 'Sound of Eden' rework

What is 'Obsessions'?

Six years is a long time to sit out the album format, especially for an artist who never really left the road. Hot Since 82, the Barnsley producer and DJ born Daley Padley, has announced 'Obsessions', a nine-track record landing 4 September 2026 on his own Knee Deep In Sound. It is his first full-length since 2020's 'Recovery', and by his own account it is not just another stack of club tools.

Padley frames the album as the product of "a period of introspection and movement." That phrasing matters. This reads less as a traditional dance record than as a personal reckoning with where he is now, both as an artist and as a person. After a decade of building Knee Deep In Sound into one of the more reliable tech-leaning house imprints around, a self-examining album is a deliberate move, not a contractual one.

Why does 'Shaded' matter?

The lead single, 'Shaded', came out 12 June 2026, and it is the kind of record that tells you where his head is at. It samples Shades of Rhythm's 'The Sound of Eden', a 1991 UK rave classic that was originally conceived as the theme for a rave called "The Garden of Eden." Padley reworks it into a funk-laden, euphoric piano roller, the sort of track built to detonate at the right hour. He has already been dropping it in his summer DJ sets, so it arrives road-tested rather than studio-sealed.

"Moments like this don't come around often. Taking a record you've loved for years, being invited inside it, and then helping introduce it to a new generation of dancefloors is something I'll never take for granted."

That is Padley on what it meant to be handed the keys to a record he grew up on. There is a lineage at work here: a 1991 rave anthem, reshaped in 2026 by someone who can put it back in front of a crowd that may never have heard the original.

How does it fit his catalogue?

Releasing on Knee Deep In Sound keeps everything in-house, which is the point. Padley owns the imprint, so 'Obsessions' is an artist setting his own terms on his own platform, free to make a record about introspection rather than a record about the next festival main stage. Nine tracks is a focused runtime, not a sprawl, and pairing that with a reverent rave-history rework as the opener single signals an album with a thesis rather than a tracklist.