Lesley Mok
Lesley Mok Credit: Courtesy

Avant-percussionist Lesley Mok — even with a career based on musical surprise and stepping confidently into the unknown — is really leaning in to making 2026  a year of change and firsts. Their latest solo album, this summer’s Transient, sees Mok stepping out from behind the drums and taking a headlong dive into electronics and soundscapes. 

Influenced equally by the skittering beats of Autechre, the elegiac soundscapes of Ryuichi Sakamoto and the lyrical rhythm of Afro-Cuban rumba drumming, Transient is the chronicle of a new chapter in Mok’s creative life and an evocative journey through immersive techno-organic miniatures — “affective zones,” per Mok.

And though mostly improvised, hearing Transient from start to finish gives the listener a sense of an intentional narrative arc; Mok’s compositions are lyrical and physical — there very much is a ghost in this machine.

And now they’re mere days away from venturing into the great unknown that is Florida for a series of solo shows — their first ever sustained run of performances here, set up by former Orlandoan Steve Head, who they connected with while recording with  History Dog in Gainesville — and presented by the Civic Minded 5. Not to mention raves from peers who took the Florida plunge and were surprised by what they found. Mok’s Orlando show happens at Timucua White House on Monday, Nov. 16 with Felipe Tovar Henao opening the night.

“I’ve never played really in Florida except for Miami once,” says Mok. “I have a number of friends who’ve done some tours down there and just had really great experiences connecting with audiences and sharing music in places I think that improvising musicians might not think of immediately when they go on tour.”

Mok, a jazz-rooted percussionist already acclaimed for pushing the form forward, will not only be stepping out of their comfort zone geographically but creatively, leaving the drumkit to play a solo show of new music using Transient as the jumping-off point.

“I’ll be playing an electroacoustic set that I’ve been working on for the last couple months, material from my solo record Transient, and also some new electroacoustic improvisations and explorations,” says Mok.  “There’s some beat-making, there’s some more ambient sections, some noisier sections as well, it traverses a few different landscapes. I like to think about it as this journey through a sensorium where there are these different affective zones. Zones that you might walk through as if you’re in a physical space.”

This is a metaphor Mok has used to describe the sensory experience of Transient before, likening it to the experience of walking through a museum, a gallery. And indeed, there is a definite feeling of being guided through unknown spaces as the album unfolds around you.

True to “moving through different zones” in the music, the album was written and recorded over a long period of time, beginning as a number of disconnected and often unintentional recording exercises as Mok navigated new creative tools and strategies.

“At first I wasn’t really thinking about a record, I was just wanting to dive deeper into electronics and find different ways to express myself in ways that an acoustic drum set would be more difficult to. I was making these little études and then taking some time off, coming back to it, and trying to do something else. After a few months, I began collecting these small snippets or vignettes for what eventually became the record,” remembers Mok. “Then I had this intense 10-day process in Paris where I was mixing the material all at once, and that felt like a really nice experience to have after working on the material in these different layered ways across the span of a year.”

Though the work on the album covers an awe-inspiring range, from the disorienting drums and hall-of-mirrors blips and synths of “In the Funhouse” to the bathing-in-crystals calm of “Caught by the Tides,” there is a cohesive and almost seamless narrative flow to the album, perhaps conjured in that single marathon session in Paris using a vintage board and gear, finding previously hidden throughlines.

“It became a fun experiment in production, post-production, and exploring the compositional possibilities of the record in the mixing process,” Mok affirms.

So much of Mok’s current solo creative practice is a year-zero style reset — a dramatic departure from a drumming that has taken them around the world, playing and recording with the likes of Myra Melford, Chris Williams and Mary Halvorson (all of whom have played Orlando at Timucua, also presented by the CM5), and even releasing a chamber-jazz album for tentet, The Living Collection, in 2023. Back in 2024, New York City Jazz Record praised Mok’s “surging rhythm and textural savvy” as a percussionist, even then realizing that the best was yet to come, as writer John Sharpe made sure to point out Mok’s “burgeoning talent as a composer.” For Mok, though, this is less of a departure and more a continuum.

“I started off playing piano before drums, and I think of myself in some ways as a frustrated piano player. I love the drum set, and it feels so much a part of my voice, but I think there are also limitations with every instrument. With drums, there’s a sense of resonance and decay and explicit harmonic movement that sometimes I’m just not able to express. Picking up electronics was a way of channeling expression that I was drawn to, but didn’t necessarily have the tools to express,” says Mok. “It’s this combination of trying to express harmony, express melody, but also do it in a way that feels connected to my physicality and the gestures that I would employ at the drums.”

Let Lesley Mok give you a tour through fantastical new sonic zones this week. 

7 pm. Monday, Nov. 16, Timucua White House, 2000 S. Summerlin Ave., timucua.com, $15.

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This article appears in Nov. 11-17, 2026.