Only Now and Jaijiu Talk Rebel Cry, Congolese Production, and Making Records Without Meeting

Transmission 390: Interview with Only Now +

Kush Arora is a Bay Area producer working under the alias Only Now, whose output draws on Punjabi music, industrial, dancehall, drone, and doom. Active under his own name since the early 2000s and under earlier aliases dating back to 1997, he has released records on Bokeh Versions, Infinite Machine, Discrepant, Polaar, and Club Yeke. His collaborators have included Iggor Cavalera, Cutty Ranks, Gappy Ranks, and Peter Arensdorf of King Woman; live appearances have placed him alongside Moritz Von Oswald and Andy Stott. Elias Musiak, operating as Jaijiu, is a Buenos Aires-based audiovisual artist who co-runs the label Rebote Discoteca, a platform for experimental and contemporary club music from Latin America.

Title: Rebel Cry
Artist: Chrisman Jaijiu Only Now
Release Date: 2026-03-06
Genres: Drone, Electronica, Experimental Music, Industrial Music
Label: Kush Arora Productions
Description: Interview with Only Now and Jaijiu on Rebel Cry (Kush Arora Productions, March 2026): Punjabi drums, baile funk, kuduro, dancehall, and a Chrisman remix.

His work reroutes sounds from Argentine carnival and Latin nightlife into post-club composition. The two connected via Instagram in late 2022, beginning an exchange of drum sounds and MIDI files that eventually produced Rebel Cry, a three-track EP released on Kush Arora Productions in March 2026, with a remix from Chrisman, a producer and DJ from the Democratic Republic of Congo currently based in Uganda, who has released two albums on Hakuna Kulala and headed the Nyege Nyege studios in Kampala.

What artists or albums hit you in a way that made you think: I need to make my own music?

I knew from a very young age, having played piano, then drums, that I needed to make records. These were some that pushed it over the edge for me:

• Skinny Puppy – Too Dark Park
• The Future Sound of London – Lifeforms
• Sepultura – Beneath The Remains
• Godflesh – Cold World EP

And whatever I heard of Zakir Hussain in passing at my parents; all of his 90s and late 80s releases. 

How did the two of you first connect, and what made you confident a collaboration would work?

We connected in late 2022 over Instagram after mutual admiration for each other’s music, and within days knew that we operated in a very similar fashion. We had some mutual friends like Lechuga Zafiro which also made us both feel like this was a community. We did some phone calls and countless voice / text messages, then a few weeks later started trading drum sounds, formulating ideas. The vibe was right – we knew that as artists who work with challenging rhythms, we could do something that pushes things to the limits. I gave Jaijiu drum sounds, he gave me some MIDI and Ableton instruments he was experimenting with, and then it sat…we both played around, and then I pulled the trigger and made part 1.

Kush, you’ve worked under the Only Now alias for a while now; how does this project differ from your solo practice?

To clarify a bit, most of Only Now is solo, though I have done lots of collaborations over the years or had guests enter the picture. The music under my birth name Kush Arora spans back to the early 2000s, and even other alias’ dating back to 1997 / 98. The music under my name was mainly Indo-Caribbean influenced — obviously, touches of other genres snuck their way in, but I produced a lot of dub, grime, dancehall, with a dark and Punjabi touch to it. Much of that music was produced with vocalists and performed as such. It’s certainly a different beast than Only Now – much less experimental in nature, focusing more on adding unique touches to movements and sounds I felt needed updating. 

My solo practice at this point is Only Now, with no boundaries, genre restrictions or marketing goals. It’s pure and unfiltered, led only by making art. It’s much more centred on what I’ve historically done since I started making music. The reason the alias started – other than just wanting a fresh start – is that I took a break from the experimental world that I was so entrenched in up to about 2006. I needed to actually have fresh ideas, having grown tired of loafing around ambient, noise, IDM and experimental circles. While the music was good, it didn’t feel new. I’ll always gravitate towards what allows me to express myself in the freshest way possible, and that wasn’t the case at the time. It took a while to return to that with fresh ideas so here we are. I’d say a lot of the other material I was doing [outside of Only Now] was consciously trying something else, was aware of the “scene” or that there was some hustle involved to some degree. 

The EP draws on Indian percussion, baile funk, kuduro, grime, and dancehall simultaneously; was there a conscious decision to push all of those into a single frame, or did it happen organically?

This happened organically based off the history of where myself and the rest of us have come from. I am conscious of influences, but I never look at making music like a formula, as if to try and say “Hmm, let me hit the global south, east, west, north” all at once or something like that.

How do you each relate to the idea of heritage in music; is it something you think about deliberately or does it surface on its own?

It’s a blend of both. My mission since day one has been to turn my culture’s music on it’s head, hack it, power my way through it with a lack of any proper training and treat it like SOUND. I know all three of us love our culture’s music, but aren’t bound to it. We’re not here to appeal to some nonprofit check or marketing ploy for an “Indian diaspora, African diaspora, global South,” type of curated nonsense. I find that incredibly cheesy, limiting, and the art tends to suffer greatly, full of half ass grifters who are using their RACE to validate their music, instead of the music drawing interest in one’s culture. That’s a very important distinction, and I’ve experienced what that world looked like over the course of my 20s and 30s whilst doing many other projects. There are 1.5 billion Indians in this world, nobody fucking cares man, make some new sounding shit! That doesn’t mean I won’t embrace or work with people who know all it “properly”, but that’s for sure not my role in this world. I’m not obligated to bring my heritage into my music, there is loads of music where you would never know where I’m from if you heard it. I can say the same for Chrisman and Jaijiu too. Given that all of us come from rich cultural backgrounds and traditions as people, it bleeds into our music naturally as well. 

What does the title ‘Rebel Cry’ name for you; what were you pushing against or toward when you made this?

On one level, the title came to me because the music felt like the drums of rebellion hitting on all cylinders. Nothing particularly deep, but it sounds like the walls are tearing down and people want justice. I’m always pushing against the nefarious with my music, even if there are no words stating this overtly. It’s built into the sound, and I can say the same for Chrisman and Jaijiu. It’s uncompromising, unrelenting, and it’s about getting folks out of their cycles, out of their patterns of club and underground music, and getting them off their asses to feel propelled and deal with this world.

On another level, all three of us have found ourselves, at times, outliers within even underground circles; our sound doesn’t fit into DJ-ready and digestible fare for drugged out people who don’t want to ruin their “flow” etc. Our inherent love for music also makes us very averse to the ladder climbing we see in individuals around us. 

How did Chrisman come into the picture, and what did his remix bring that surprised you?

Chrisman and I got connected through some mutual pals from Duma when they were a band. I had toured the West Coast with Duma, Sammy and Lord Spikeheart, and I beleve Chrisman and I started talking around that time. Both Chrisman and I produced some material on the Ratigan Era album for Hakuna Kulala (the Nyege Nyege Tapes affiliated label) and ever since I heard his music I was a fan. Much like Jaijiu, we kept trading and planning collabs. Actually I just released some collaborative materials of ours. He made a track called ‘Tarza’, and I did a version of it that came out in May. 

Chrisman is a wicked producer, he doesn’t obey song conventions – and chooses very unique motifs within his bizarre and simultaneously catchy beat work. With his remix, he took my daughter’s voice and brought it to another wacky place – it really surprised me. He took the spirit from the first song and took it to a place of straight darkness.

Are there non-musical references that are fed into this EP; political situations, visual art, specific places?

Always. It’s front and center for me, living in the US as it finally declines, as I imagined it would as a child. However, Chrisman and Jaijiu are from DR Congo and Argentina, where urgent political realities are far more present than in the US. We’re not in a punk band with vocals, so it’s really about the feeling of trying to capture some of that energy in a distinct way. I worked with BMS Illustrations for the art who has done countless black metal record covers across South America, India, and beyond that fit the spikey nature of our sounds. With us all not having ever met one another (though I’m playing with Jaijiu in September!), some of that conversation is much more implied and drawn from our daily life conversations, than from us plotting around the record.

How do you handle the logistics of a collaboration across that kind of distance; was this built over sessions, file exchanges, or something else?

File exchanges, and then lots of experimentation and waiting. It’s a frustrating process at times, but the cool part; you truly get unexpected results. This song might never have been the result of us sitting in a room together. It’s disjointed fiddlings with pieces of files and ruminating on concepts via chats and neither one of us is really sure if the other person is going to like it. Lots of producers in our general circle have such far flung tastes from where they live, we’ve all become used to this true form of putting yourself out there. Lots of stuff never sees the light of day, but then the stuff that does, is often really fresh. Some Ableton and stem parts back and forth, but also just lots of communication about what to remove from the track or what to add. Pretty standard in many ways, but I think with such ambiguous frameworks about what the RESULT of these would be, it takes a lot of creativity and faith to have this dialogue between folks who have never met and may never meet. The goal of it is very pure; art with zero borders.

What is each of you working on separately right now, and does this collaboration change the direction of your solo work?

Kush Arora / Only Now: I learn so much from each of the folks in this journey by doing collabs, that it for sure influences me each time. It doesn’t change the direction of my solo work, but I also am not bothered if it derails my own solo albums a bit. The community and learning from one another is part of it. 

I am releasing an EP called ‘Eternal Wrath’, a follow up to my ‘Black Wind / Merciless Destiny’ series. I’ve also just released a string of singles with various labels from Outer Veil (SF) to Sounds of Paimona (Milan). A remix I did for Obeka is incoming; almost gabber level dancehall and goat skin drums from Punjab that are called Dhad. Up next is a 5-track EP for RTZ (Return to Zero) with Manchester based artist FUMU. Probably my most digital and computer music based work; dancehall gone salvia type music that we made in London together a few years back and have kept twisting this way and that way since; will be released on CD. 

I just planned a trip to Richmond, Virginia, to work on some songs with the reactivated Prison Religion project. This week I finished up the mixes for an album; a year plus long collab with Chicago’s DJ Hank, flipping footwork and my take on Dek Bass / Dhol Tashas into a really fun, playful, yet deadly mix. 

After that is a collab I started with Shigeru Ishihara aka Scotch Egg / Scotch Rolex, an avid collaborator like myself, who has worked with the likes of Shackleton and is part of Waq Waq Kingdom. We started that record in Berlin last year; a ritualistic, dubwise Indo-Japanese type of music, really mystical. I’m gonna finish that soon. In the same journey I collaborated with Peruvian operators Dengue Dengue Dengue; lots of shakers and distortion and really f–king loud haha. I also did a tune with the Barcelona-based Jokkoo collective; a feral, industrial dancehall rap track that we did in person together at their studio, a very exciting and tight-knit group of folks. That was very special to do. 

The French producer Brodinski and I did two tracks a number of years back, and we finally decided on how we’re gonna finish that off later this summer, so I’m very excited to see the light of day on that as we have sat on it for a bit but met up and got some solid ideas this winter. 

The Mauritious producer Tripes and I have a single that we did that should come out in the summer too.

From Jaijiu: “I just finished my first European tour and am now heading back to Montreal to finish my EP that will come out in July through Rebote Discoteca”

From Chrisman: “The only project I’m working on right now is making albums and EPS every week!”

Photos courtesy of © Only Now, © Chrisman © Jaijiu

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others