Lesley Mok – Transient
On Transient, Lesley Mok melds percussion and electronics to sculpt in time
New York-based percussionist and sound artist Lesley Mok describes her music as "a passage through affective zones." A phrase that carries a cinematic charge, the soundworld she's created is not unlike the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker: oppressive, mysterious, and existing outside the confines of conventional spatio-temporality. Navigating the friction between digital electronics and analogue percussion, while drawing on her jazz and free-improvisation background, each track plays like a scene from a film unfurling in darkness. berserk opens with a rain of metallic chimes, its rhythm unstable, seemingly sentient. midland unsettles further: an industrial hum yields to irradiated clicks, conjuring a landscape both dangerous and alluring.
Throughout, Mok largely abandons the 4/4 pulse; her beats cluster and dissolve, as if calibrating to the circadian rhythm of an alien ecosystem. williams landing recalls the iconic five-note sequence from Close Encounters, as if stumbling upon an alien language waiting to be decoded. Meanwhile, the soft, swirling textures of caught by the tides feel like being carried home by the currents of time. Despite its cinematic qualities, Transient resists narrative. There's no clear progression, only a succession of atmospheres. The effect is disquieting, yet difficult to shake.
Listen to: beserk, williams landing