Bay Area producer Kush Arora aka Only Now presents ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’, an unfiltered flex that invokes razor-sharp up rhythms, deep space isolationist electronics and blasted soundsystem pressure.

Drawn together with quick, intuitive facility, the six tracks that feature represent a lustrous, pitch-black confrontation, moving through mythic siren song, industrial dancehall, spatial sequencing experiments, and ruminative inflections on 90s era metal.

Completed during the lockdown period, the record’s intoxicating sense of tension and collapse reflects Arora’s personal response to the Coronavirus crisis and to the global protests, chronicling the escalating pressure and unease of this period but also symbolizing a purgative and powerful creative emission.

Across the course of just over twenty minutes, Arora lays out an unremitting, panoramic nightfall of sound, echoing the protean kinetics of kuduro & Gqom – often found in previous work – whilst channelling the heavy storm cloud menace of drone and metal nostalgia. Amongst it all, there are moments of disarming release, with ‘unclassical’ strings adding unexpected counterpoint to the myriad accelerations and cavernous zones found throughout ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’.

Eliciting comparisons with Low Jack, the output of Nyege Nyege Tapes & Principe Discos and the monolithic Scorn, ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ is a signal of ruthless evolution.
Head into the void, once again, with Only Now.

Artwork by Karmazid.
‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ is a free, pay what you want release available via the Only Now Bandcamp page, with all proceeds donated to civil rights causes and organizations. Previous donations were provided to the Bay Area Anti- Repression Committee Bail Fund.

Out August 21st 2020 on Kush Arora Productions.

Only Now - Black Wind / Merciless Destiny

Bay Area based experimental producer Kush Arora aka Only Now & guitarist Peter Arensdorf (King Woman) aka Beneath The Ruins convene for the debut EP "Anamnesis" of Badlands atmospherics, infernal electronics, & resonant West Coast blues ruination.

The product of contrasting ideas & components, this first Only Now & Beneath The Ruins collaboration is nevertheless a coalition where parallel worlds meet. Compiled from recording sessions captured at Arora/Arensdorf's homes in 2019 & 2020, they indicate the development of a symbiotic creative partnership.

Here, Arensdorf’s intimate guitar meditations are framed by Arora’s seismic, cavernous treatments, evoking the open landscapes & haunting liminality of the desert ghost towns found in the duo’s home state of California. There are traces of Dylan Carlson & Earth’s searing drone odysseys as well as Robert Rich’s high-resolution soundscapes, reflecting a uniquely Pacific Northwest milieu. Yet even if the imprints of this lineage are present & correct, Arora & Arensdorf have their own distant horizons in mind.

In a convergence of miasmic, atonal dub & abstract, existential Americana, Only Now & Beneath The Ruins outlay an exchange of sonorous fretwork, broiling feedback & thunderous sub-bass across seven tracks, depicting a sparse canvas of solitude & wilderness.

Powerful & apocalyptic in tone, Only Now & Beneath The Ruins conceive a series of blasted transmissions from peripheral frontiers. A melancholic, revisionist Spaghetti Western for end times.

Recorded between 2019-2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area

Mixed by Kush Arora & passed to renowned engineer & producer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Wreck & Reference, Oathbreaker) at the Atomic Garden recording studios for the final touches.

RIYL Earth, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare, Bill Orcutt, Robert Reich.

Peter Arensdorf  - Guitar, Electronics
Kush Arora - Electronics, Mixing
Jack Shirley - Final Mixing, Mastering (Atomic Garden Studio, Oakland)

Only Now x Beneath The Ruins - Anamnesis

Timeslave (II)’ sees Kush Arora’s Only Now project return with renewed intensity, in the sequel to the formative Infinite Machine release ‘Timeslave (I)’.

After the groundbreaking hybridity of the debut volume in the ‘Indian Unclassical’ series, the emphatic riddim-focused explorations of dancehall, bashment, and drill found on the Club Yeke EP ‘Vision’ – released under Arora’s own name – and select live dates alongside the likes of Andy Stott, Debit & Nyege Nyege-affiliated metal pioneers Duma, ‘Timeslave (II)’ finds Arora invigorated by aesthetic variation and constructive collaboration.

Enlisting renowned, specialist percussionists including Iggor Cavalera (co-founding member of Sepultura), Dave Sharma (Sub Swara) & Ravish Momin aka Sunken Cages, Arora adds symbiotic fuel to the fire, infusing the resonant, largescale sound world of the Only Now project with raw, frenetic insurgencies of virtuosic instrumentation.

Set within devastating productions that venture into graphic drone, hyperkinetic drum sequences, dub ruination (‘I Am Remembering’), writhing, cataclysmic noise (‘Shiv – Vengeance 2’, ‘EVP Inversion’), and even, degraded, introspective doom metal interludes (‘Endless Defeat’), the restless rhythms of Arora’s...  more
credits
released November 11, 2022

Artwork by Karmazid
Mastered by Micheal Buchanan
all mixing and composition by Kush Arora, and respective guests for drums on each track
Special thanks to Orogen, Tim Wilson, and all who participated in this.
license

Only Now - Timeslave II

Only Now - Fate / Will

Only Now - Captivity (Souk Records)

Excerpt from Only Now's set live with DUMA, March 12th, 2022 at the Lab SF
Featuring upcoming collabs from Sunken Cages, Igor Cavalera, and more unreleased material from Kush Arora.

Only Now Live  part 2 With DUMA March 12th At The LAB SF

Only Now x Dave Sharma - I Am Remembering

Only Now - Eternal Torch (feat. Iggor Cavalera)

Only Now - Endless Defeat

Only Now x Sunken Cages - Instinct

Only Now - Shiv (Vengeance 2)

Only Now - Fate Ends

Only Now - INTRA

Only Now - Vengeance II feat. Dave Sharma

Only Now - NO ESCAPE Pt. II

Cut from the performance prepared for San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and mixed

Only Now - Trance Return (live rework) (mastered)

Only Now - Fate Pt.1

Only Now - Captivity (INTROS OUTROS ONLY)

Live from the board a wild session with Only Now live at the Club Moniker label night
Features unreleased collabs with
JaiJiu (Argentina)
Darama (UK)
and many more things upcoming for the year

Only Now - Live At Club Moniker (Underground SF) 2.24.2024

A sneak preview of the new track "No Escape" from Only Now.
video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-JtHqBq4-g&feature=youtu.be

VIDEO

Only Now - No Escape (Preview)

Only Now is the land where cyberpunk aesthetics, underground african riddims, and spacious explorations into cinematic sound collide for intense results. It is produced by San Francisco's Kush Arora.

After years away of experimentation in percussion and industrial sound, Kush decided to launch Only Now to explore new forms of sonic architecture, dripped in apocalyptic fantasies. Influenced by more traditional excursions in the niche scenes kuduro, dark afrohouse, and tribal sounds, he aimed to fuse those with tuned metal, voice, and proto real synthesis. Influences can be heard from Buraka Som Sistema to Wax Trax Records and haunting film soundtracks peppering the record, but at the core of it lies unbridled experimentation and wall of sonic low end.

Check out the WHOLE EP

Inside The Mineral Room

DOWNLOAD HERE

Mid Riot

Download Here

Needs

"Flare" is the first track of the new Only Now release. "Hollow" is the 2nd release from Only Now, containing 4 obsidian slabs of vivid and uncompromising sonic architecture by Kush Arora. The record explores vast landscapes of mutant Kuduro, Gqom, and industrial sounds with the techniques of physically modeled drums, undulating tempo, and resonant processing. "Hollow' is brooding and melodic, utilizing choral structures, tuned steel, synthesis, and more electronics than the live percussive bombasts of the last release.

Available from Kush Arora Productions onlynow.bandcamp.com/album/hollow

Flare

Virus encoding is Only Now's dedication to hacker's worldwide from the new "Hollow " ep.
"Hollow" is the 2nd release from Only Now, containing 4 obsidian slabs of vivid and uncompromising sonic architecture by Kush Arora. The record explores vast landscapes of mutant Kuduro, Gqom, and industrial sounds with the techniques of physically modeled drums, undulating tempo, and resonant processing. "Hollow' is brooding and melodic, utilizing choral structures, tuned steel, synthesis, and more electronics than the live percussive bombasts of the last release.

Available from Kush Arora Productions onlynow.bandcamp.com/album/hollow

Virus Encoding

ONLY NOW's first dj mix sets the influences for the peformance August 5th at legendary Shambhala festival, in British Columbia, Canada. Read an in depth interview and hear the influences that brought this project to light all here.
http://www.shambhalamusicfestival.com/smf2016-mix-series-002-only-now/

learn more about only now at https://onlynow.bandcamp.com/album/hollow


INTERVIEW/TRACKLIST

Only Now Dj Set [Shambhala 2016 Mix Series]

Only Now Live at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco 9.29.2017 with Dj Lag, Siete Cotrce, Dj Tr4vi3za. Recorded from the board thanks to Alaric for the recording.

Only Now Live At Gray Area Foundation for the Arts SF 9.29.2017

eternally bound to time | seek ejection
Only Now is Kush Arora. 
Following in the wake of well received appearances on Infinite Machine and
Discrepant’s fledgling imprint Sucata Tapes, Eternal Binding reprises and expands upon the
heavy submergence of Arora’s prior outings as Only Now, bringing together amorphous
shadings of black metal and industrial with febrile Kuduro rhythms. Recorded between 2017
& 2019, Eternal Binding opens with The Scales, an overture that embodies the project’s

sound universe with smash & run beat cycles and scorched, monumental riffs.
Meanwhile The Stand adopts computer feedback, resonation techniques and feedback loops
to conjure a deep, bleeding edge, ego-dissolving journey that touches on themes of time,
space and existence. Concluding with Ejection, Arora acknowledges the significant influence
of Berlin School krautrock and kosmische - particularly Popol Vuh's Aguirre I - as choral
elements emerge midway through a revelatory finale.
Altogether Eternal Binding represents a response to profound subject matter for Arora; a
contention with the human condition, the notion of our enslavement to time, the challenges of
fatherhood and a desperate attempt to make sense of it all.
Fans of Bill Laswell, Nazar, Sunn O))), Principe Discos & Zoviet France take note.
Throughout his discography and as a core member of soundsystem collective, acclaimed
club night and long running radio show Surya Dub, Arora has been a crucial figure in
championing and exploring the convergence between bass, electronics and roots music in
San Francisco and beyond. Well received appearances at Mutek 2018 and with DJ Lag,
Equiknoxx and Kode9 have presented a heavy and immersive live show while assorted
projects with Gappy Ranks, Stereotyp, Jahdan Blackkkamoore, and Dreadsquad, as well as
remixes for the likes of Elephant Man, Cutty Ranks and Spoeke Mathambo, have all been
marked by a broad and visionary signature, one that extends to the distinctly infernal
expanses of his recent work under the Only Now alias.

Recorded between 2017 and 2019 in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. 
Mixed: Ancient Owl Studios and KAP. 
Mastered: Jeremy Cox 
Art: Kush, Ryan Ormsby

Eternal Binding

obtain

Only Now - The Scales

Track preview of Only Now's Captivity out 11th October on SOUK (Discrepant)

http://www.soukrecords.com/

Captivity

Only Now - Captivity (from Captivity EP)

Cyberpunk aesthetics and mutant kuduro from Kush Arora's experimental alter-ego.

'Captivity' is out October 11th on Souk Records.

Pre-order: bit.ly/2oubAK5

@onlynow2
@kusharora
@discrepant

Premiere: Only Now - Mutants [Souk Records]

Only Now - Black Wind, Pt.1

Only Now - Arrow (Vengeance)

PAYWHATYOUWANTSUPPORT

Only Now - Merciless Destiny

Bay Area experimental producer Kush Arora aka Only Now presents ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’, a compositionally raw and unfiltered work of crushing flex and weight that invokes razor-sharp up-tempo rhythms, deep space isolationist electronics and monumental soundsystem pressure.

 Seething with energies attuned to contemporary upheaval, ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ delineates the dark matter at the heart of the Only Now project, amplifying the doom, shatter and shadow found on ‘Eternal Binding’, ‘Ultimatum’, ‘Blind Time’, and on last year’s Discrepant release ‘Captivity’.

Drawn together with quick, intuitive facility, the six tracks that feature represent a lustrous, pitch-black confrontation, moving through mythic siren song, industrial dancehall, spatial sequencing experiments, and ruminative inflections on 90s era metal.

Completed during the lockdown period, the record’s intoxicating sense of tension and collapse reflects Arora’s personal response to the Coronavirus crisis and to the global protests, chronicling the escalating pressure and unease of this period but also symbolizing a purgative and powerful creative emission.

Across the course of just over twenty minutes, Arora lays out an unremitting, panoramic nightfall of sound, echoing the protean kinetics of batida, kuduro & Gqom – often found in previous work – whilst channelling the heavy storm cloud menace of drone, dark ambient, and even death metal. Amongst it all, there are moments of disarming release, with ‘unclassical’ strings adding unexpected counterpoint to the myriad accelerations and cavernous zones found throughout ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’.

 Eliciting comparisons with Low Jack, Earth & The Bug’s ‘Concrete Desert’, Principe Discos and Bolt Thrower, ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ is a signal of ruthless evolution; the latest instalment in a vital, concerted run of releases from the Only Now project.

A soundclash in a black hole.

Head into the void, once again, with Only Now.

Artwork by Karmazid.
‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ will be a free, pay what you want release available via the Only Now Bandcamp page, with all proceeds donated to civil rights causes and organizations.

Out August 21st 2020 on Kush Arora Productions.

Only Now - Merciless Destiny, Pt. 3

Only Now - Merciless Destiny, Pt. 2

Bay Area experimental producer Kush Arora aka Only Now presents 'Black Wind / Merciless Destiny', a compositionally raw and unfiltered work of crushing flex and weight that invokes razor-sharp up-tempo rhythms, deep space isolationist electronics and monumental soundsystem pressure.
 
Seething with energies attuned to contemporary upheaval, ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ delineates the dark matter at the heart of the Only Now project, amplifying the doom, shatter and shadow found on ‘Eternal Binding’, ‘Ultimatum’, ‘Blind Time’, and on last year’s Discrepant release ‘Captivity’.
 
Drawn together with quick, intuitive facility, the six tracks that feature represent a lustrous, pitch-black confrontation, moving through mythic siren song, industrial dancehall, spatial sequencing experiments, and ruminative inflections on 90s era metal.
 
Across the course of just over twenty minutes, Arora lays out an unremitting, panoramic nightfall of sound, echoing the protean kinetics of batida, kuduro & Gqom – often found in previous work – whilst channelling the heavy storm cloud menace of drone, dark ambient, and even death metal. Amongst it all, there are moments of disarming release, with ‘unclassical’ strings adding unexpected counterpoint to the myriad accelerations and cavernous zones found throughout 'Black Wind / Merciless Destiny'.
A soundclash in a black hole. Head into the void, once again, with Only Now.

Black Wind / Merciless Destiny [ALBUM PREVIEW]

Only Now X Beneath The Ruins - Mine Of Memories

Only Now X Beneath The Ruins - Showdown

ONly Now X Beneath The Ruins - Tomb Sweeper

Bay Area based experimental producer Kush Arora aka Only Now & guitarist Peter Arensdorf (King Woman) aka Beneath The Ruins convene for their debut EP 'Anamnesis', a work of Badlands atmospherics, infernal electronics, & resonant West Coast blues ruination.

The product of contrasting ideas & components, this first Only Now & Beneath The Ruins collaboration is nevertheless a coalition where parallel worlds meet. Compiled from recording sessions captured at the homes of Arora & Arensdorf in 2019 & 2020, they indicate the development of a symbiotic creative partnership.

Here, Arensdorf’s intimate guitar meditations are framed by Arora’s seismic, cavernous treatments, evoking the open landscapes & haunting liminality of the desert ghost towns found in the duo’s home state of California. There are traces of Dylan Carlson & Earth’s searing drone odysseys as well as Robert Rich’s high-resolution soundscapes, reflecting a uniquely Pacific Northwest milieu. Yet even if the imprints of this lineage are present & correct, Arora & Arensdorf have their own distant horizons in mind.

In a convergence of miasmic ambient, atonal dub & abstract, existential Americana, Only Now & Beneath The Ruins outlay an exchange of sonorous fretwork, broiling feedback & thunderous sub-bass across seven tracks, depicting a sparse canvas of solitude & wilderness.

Powerful & apocalyptic in tone, Only Now & Beneath The Ruins conceive a series of blasted transmissions from peripheral frontiers. A melancholic, revisionist Spaghetti Western for end times.

RIYL Earth, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare, Bill Orcutt, Robert Rich

The first single 'Mine of Memories' is out February 19th

'Anamnesis' is released March 12th

Tracklist

1. Showdown
2. Destiny
3. Tomb Sweeper
4. Mine of Memories
5. Ghost Town Drift
6. Temple of Regret
7. Illusion

Recorded between 2019 - 2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area

Mixed by Kush Arora & passed to renowned engineer & producer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Wreck & Reference, Oathbreaker) at the Atomic Garden recording studios for the final touches
 

Only Now is the vision of Kush Arora, based in Berkeley, California, a project that addresses themes of time, existence, & the beyond. His sound is an unremitting emission of razor-sharp up-tempo rhythms, deep space isolationist electronics & primal channellings.

Only Now has released material on Infinite Machine (Mexico), Discrepant (Lisbon), & Polaar Sounds (France), and has performed at MUTEK, alongside the likes of Equiknoxx & Kode9.

'Anamnesis' by Only Now & Beneath The Ruins is the first release in a year of diverse, prolific output, including upcoming tracks on Hakuna Kulala (offshoot of Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes) & 'riddim production' for Bokeh Versions (Bristol)

Kush has been producing under his own name for nineteen years, blending Indo-Caribbean sounds with singular interpretations of dancehall, dub, & industrial, collaborating with the likes of Gappy Ranks & appearing on labels such as Dutty Artz
 

Beneath the Ruins is the solo project of guitarist & bassist Peter Arensdorf. Arensdorf is based in the Bay Area and draws musical influence from disparate sources, with an unrelenting quest for new sounds and textures.  Along with his collaborative works he also plays and writes for the doom band King Woman (Relapse Records)

Arensdorf has graced the stages of Roadburn & Pop Montreal, and has toured with acts such as Russian Circles and Oathbreaker.  His upbringing and influences range from traditional guitar innovators like John Fahey, to the experimental works of Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth, to the hypnotic writings of Dylan Carlson and Earth.

OnlyNow

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