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Lesley Mok transient

On transient, percussionist and sound artist Lesley Mok shares an assemblage of sonic vignettes suffused with introversion, poignancy, nostalgia, and contemplative observation.

In fall 2023, Mok decided to distill several years of sound-making beyond the physical drum kit into a solo record. Sculpted as a combination of digital electronics, live improvisation, and studio manipulation, Mok describes the music as a passage through affective zones—like a slow deliberate walk through a museum where its unknown sensorium unfolds itself to you. Feelings of being outside oneself, meditations on interiority, observations of self and surrounding—all distantly shimmer in the colloidal fog of this music, within which diegetic film scoring, the presence of composers like Autechre, Robert Hood, and Ryuchi Sakamoto, the exploratory abstraction of contemporary improvisation, the propulsion of Cuban Rumba drumming, and the figurative language of acousmatic sound all coexist.

Mok’s turn to electronics for this release unfolds in the generative exploration of melody, cadence, resonance, and decay. The record expands on the sensibilities of Mok’s work in their debut record The Living Collection, in which each musician’s artistry is heard in an organically attuned and responsive totality. Mok embodies the large ensemble as a soloist—exploring rhythm, timbre, texture, weight and pulse, and how they can sonify our emotional landscapes.

Existing alongside their electronic counterparts, transient preserves the presence of acoustic drums in ways that are at times heavily transformed and abstracted, and at other times, more clearly recognizable as their original voice. Where the gauzy and transporting world of electronics represents a protected, internal space, the drums operate as a live commentator, signifying a confrontation with reality. The tension between Mok’s inner world, often surreal but immersive and total, and their observational outer environment lives sublimated in the album’s collection of durational spaces. Subtle yet deeply personal, there’s a sense of absence and removal, leaving us to feel the quietly buzzing magnetic field of the work, rather than being brought inside to sit within its nucleus.

Without a prescriptive arc or clarity of intent, transient offers an experience that mirrors the breadth, complexity, and randomness of daily life where humor, gravitas, irreverence, darkness and play unfold quietly—like warm, dark opaque water and the invitation to wade in.

releases July 17, 2026

Compositions, Drums, Electronics, and Production by Lesley Mok
Additional Production by Jason Nazary (track 4)
Recording by Andres Abenante at Jaybird Studio
Mixing by Anthony Cazade at La Frette Studios
Mastering by Emilie Daelemans
Album Artwork and Design by Lesley Mok
Layout by Devin Shaffer

Special thanks to Jordan Reyes whose generous support allowed me to make the album and whose photography inspired me to try my hand at the album artwork and David Leon whose feedback and encouragement strengthened my confidence in the music.