Alongside Public Works and KALW, White Crate is proud to be bringing to San Francisco one of the wildest Congolese bands out there: KOKOKO! They’re not based in the Bay but both supporting acts are, and they’re both badasses. Kush Arora, who will be performing under his more experimental moniker Only Now, brings an unremitting emission of razor cut rhythms, primitive channelings, and ritualistic electronics to his music and performances. Ahead of next week’s show, we spoke with Kush about his musical beginnings, his philosophical approach to music, perspectives on the Bay scene, and more. Get your tickets here.
As far back as you’d like to go: Where did your musical journey begin?
Outside of hearing ’80s hits on my dad’s car radio or his vinyl collection, I think maybe around the age of 5-6 I remember my mom started getting me to do piano lessons. At the same time, I remember there being a variety of Indian music being played in the household and that really resonated with me.
Then I remember immediately loving the piano and immediately not liking learning notes on it or having to do anything anybody told me, but just playing with a lower register of the piano. And I think that was when I knew that this was something I was going to do in some shape or form the rest of my life. I loved it.
Probably the second most notable thing would be when I got my first 1987 or ’88 Casio that had drum pads, sequencing, and the little multi-tiered options of having the drum kit on the bottom half of it and stuff like that.
When did you really start to experiment with sound – and form your identity as a musician?
I’d say fourth and fifth grade. I really got into music because the Bay Area had a good ecosystem for it at the time. There was BAM Magazine at every BART station, which had tons of cool local band listings that I would meticulously study. There was KVDS, a high school station out of Concord, which played tons of metal and stuff like DRI and Sepultura and things like that. There was 90.1 KZSU. There were stores like Tower Records, the Warehouse, and Rasputins. Within a short span of between fourth and fifth grade, I had pretty much heard a lot the main things I still listen to today. Not completely obviously, but a fair amount.
I remember buying Godflesh, Skinny Puppy (Two Dark Park), and Carcass (Tools of the Trade) in the same year. We also were hearing bhangra and dancehall at cultural events: Guys like Apache Indian and Shabba Ranks had a lasting impression. I had started playing drums in 4th grade as well along with this journey.
All the boys in the neighborhood, we’d all skateboard together and all sign up for 30 Columbia House memberships. (If you don’t know what that is, read this.) So any major release from that era between the five of us dudes we had everything. We got every shitty rock record, every big Slayer album, Metallica, all that stuff. And then a few things that were big electronic albums too, like your early breakout stuff and then really bad commercial house music stuff like La Bouche or Ace of Base or whatever. I’d say in a span of three years, by the time we were in junior high, we were listening to metal, rave tapes from the Bay and LA, goth/industrial (Wax Trax era), dub, and acid jazz.
I started an online zine back then called Tunnel Magazine, which I did from junior high till maybe junior year in high school. I started getting promos sent to my house and trading with people in all those scenes worldwide. There was a bulletin board system (BBS) called the Cyber Den for people in the Bay Area who were super into electronica, goth, industrial shit back in that era. Everybody was on it. And it was a dial-up BBS run by Xorcist who at the time was making really cool EBM and cyber industrial type of records. I found out about the Cyberden BBS through BAM magazine and seeing it in some of the shops, and that led me to connect with people and start the zine.
Alley Ghost by Kush Arora and HMXGOD
Tell us about the music you make under your name.
The majority of it is bass-heavy, left-of-center, rooted in Indo-Caribbean music, dancehall, dub, and derivatives thereof. Whether that’s things that have emerged from those scenes, everything from UK funky to dubstep with vocals to grime-type instrumentals. So it encompasses a lot of stuff that leans on my heritage, but also is a way to connect with the Caribbean community and vocalists, everywhere from Trinidad to Jamaica to London to the Bay. I always loved that stuff, but I always wanted to add something to the pile, maybe a little more experimental with a darker edge.
So what about your Only Now project?
Only Now is much more esoteric. It definitely has no boundaries compared to the stuff under my name. It has included projects that range from Indian noise and ambient (with Orogen) to very rhythmic Kuduro-influenced rhythmic warfare music, blending Indian rhythms, West African rhythm, and more. There are other records, more doom metal and dub, that I’ve done with King Woman’s guitarist Peter Arensdorf. But essentially there are no rules, and it’s really focused on me being the sole progenitor of the project.
It’s a spiritual journey through the frustrations of time and space, hence the name and the titling you see on all the projects. The inspiration for the project is that time is God. Time is the only universal force that everybody can agree on. And then simultaneously those who conquer it and can transcend it, whether through mental, through psychic energy or through other things. Those are glimpses into what man calls God and how to transcend humanism in using time as that is where I have the musical meditation around the whole thing. And conceptually all the project names are based on that and there’s a lineage and a flow and all the titling that goes with that too.
Timeslave II by Only Now
So you’re performing as Only Now for the KOKOKO! show. What can people expect from that live set?
I’m focusing on editing rhythms right now that are what I consider to be kind of ancient—simultaneously based in the future and the past. That’s a theme throughout all my music. I do think that people say that, but they’re actually definitely just referencing something from 30 years ago versus 200 years ago. It’s about actually breaking away, it’s about changing the conventions of what is traditional music.
So given the context of KOKOKO! being a Congolese band—rhythmically amazing and also fairly adventurous—I’m going through and collecting and building rhythms. Some of them are based in Indian tradition, others based in more Angolan rhythms. It’s about really, really getting into rhythms, zeroing in on them, having microfocus on each one of the drums with the synthesized drums, and then having recorded percussion and loops that are a little more timeless, and recontextualizing those along with new synthesis materials. So it’ll flow through a wide range of tempos.
In the club, I try to make the music as enveloping as possible with a few curve balls of some ambient or some interludes and things like that. Other shows that I’ve done, like at The Lab, are really meditational, and they’re more about zeroing in on more of that philosophical approach, of trying to lose yourself in linearity and hearing ancient influence, but also hearing it in such a bizarre way that it feels newly contextualized. After all, everything’s been done before in some shape or form. It’s just a matter of how it’s put together. So it’s trying to bridge those gaps and take the listener through a wide range of emotions and an actual experience. It’s not necessarily meant to be easy listening. It’s not necessarily meant to be like you walk into the club and it’s just instantly palatable. You’re there for the journey, it’s there as an experience to really transcend you and help you move—but absolutely for sure to make people dance.
You’ve been here your whole life, so how does the state of Bay Area music look to you?
It’s at a very cool place right now and it’s at a crossroads—post-third dot-com-crash, post-COVID, post a lot of venues closing. The music soldiers that remain are people who are very committed to what they’re doing, and they really do have a lot of faith and no fucks given about who’s validating their music; they’re doing it because they want to. They’re doing it because they believe in it and they’re fighting to stay here, whether it’s for their family, their job, or they simply just believe in the community. Most everybody who wanted to drop off or had the option to leave have left. Some people don’t have the option to leave because they’re stuck in a shitty economic situation, or they’re okay and they’re doing music out of love and they’re not dependent on it for their living.
It has left a very interesting ecosystem of people who have to be very savvy to survive in the Bay Area and do music. Everybody here who’s doing it goes over and above what a lot of other people who play other cities in the world would have to do in order to make it happen. Those who are making records here, whether it’s on the electronic side, the underground experimental metal side, the punk side of things, the rap side of things, it’s really, really lit. And the music that’s coming out of the Bay Area is very, very unique and owns itself and doesn’t compromise as with many Bay Area traditions.
You say it’s at a crossroads and mention a lot of venues closing. Is there a flip side to this perspective?
The second part of that conversation is that the ecosystem here on the performing side and the opportunity side has crumbled so much due to lack of investment and corporate interest in it, that it has dumbed down what was once available outside of very underground venues. You used to see more adventurous programming at larger venues. When adventurous programming happens now it’s in much more underground venues and it’s got way more characters involved because the ecosystem is so fragile that it has to be a massive group effort to make anything that’s truly progressive come out. It’s very hard to expand beyond that warehouse.
So we’re faced with a really challenging time where money is draining out of the city, so the citizens themselves have to invest a little bit more into the city and the arts and commit to it, not just keep blowing their wads going to see big bands rehashing their catalogs at the Civic Center or the Masonic. People have to invest in new artists if they have the tenacity and the time to go out.
Newsletters like White Crate, KQED and other zines are really important to making that happen because that’s what made it happen for me 30 years ago when I was 10-12 years old. There were outlets beyond commercial radio. The fact is people want to have scapegoats but the truth is the American’s population does not invest in arts overall. Even the party people you see in San Francisco, they’re going out and blowing cash, and they’re seeing a show passively. That doesn’t mean that they’re participating. There’s a big difference between participation and just consuming, and what the city needs is for people to stop consuming and start participating.
Fate/Will EP by Only Now – The next installment from Only Now’s solo work picking up where Timeslave II left off. Harmonium Noise, Daff and Dhol workouts with Dave Sharma for two rhythmic tracks, and a piece performed b yKush at the SF Electronic Music Festival called “Time Is God,” whuch is 20 minutes of resonant ambience into riddims.
Kush Arora with Runkus and Royal Blu – Two singles with reggae and dancehall songwriters who have been killing it, one on the organic D&B tip “Life in the Jungle”, and another Desi drill and dancehall bender.
Tunnel Memories by Only Now and Orogen on In Solace Publishing. Two pieces made in the course of a few days solely made from field recordings of the Albany Tunnel, diving deep into ASMR-like industrial field manipulations and slow time warping, very cool imprint run by Sutekh Hexen. Other collabs on the way with DUMA, Ptreon, Flore, and more.
Untitled EP by Only Now – Three new club bangers on the kuduro and primitive tip for San Francisco-based As You Like It. Featuring remixes from 3Phaz, and more.
See Kush’s favorite cuts from the club world, cult metal and punk scenes, and esoteric lords of ambience and noise on Buy Music Club. Some local favorites, collaborators, and more metal/punk/noise obsessions.
