Tripped-out excursions through percussive club music with the Nowadays resident.
Ayesha Chugh, AKA Ayesha, makes club music that activates the body. The Brooklyn-based artist has spent the last few years carving out a distinct lane in modern club music. Her fusion of dubstep, techno and essential '90s rave elements into dynamite club tools that test and support dancers in equal measure. This time though, for her RA Podcast, Chugh purposefully tilts in a "more colorful wonky direction."
Since first turning heads with releases on labels like Fever AM and Kindergarten Records, she’s continued to refine a sound that feels both playful and punishing, marked by writhing basslines, rumbling drums and an innate ability to make bodies move. Her productions capture a kind of kinetic precision—tracks that are slippery yet forceful, balancing psychedelic textures with dubstep-like physicality and club-focused power. As Andrew Ryce wrote of her debut, Rhythm is Memory, her skill is "full of textures that wrap around the otherwise thudding, sub-heavy kick drums." After a serious accident in 2024 stopped her in her tracks, this year marks a full return to global touring with a new vantage point on life and the sound she seeks to push.
RA.983, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, finds Chugh flexing that club muscle once again. Offering a tour through global club music both old and new, it's based around a set at her home base Nowadays this February. It's a patient but relentless ride: from deep, tunneling psytrance, progressive techno and slippery electro before really turning on the gas at the half mark, moving into slanted UK techno territory.
As she explains in the Q&A, it's a carefully curated selection of tracks that probes "what we perceive as tasteful." It's a mix that speaks to her deep knowledge of dance music’s lineage—and her intuitive ability to push it forward.
@aye5ha
Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/983