When local electronic producer Nick Zanca was diagnosed with mono in early November, he was relieved. “Everybody who has had mono has been like, ‘Oh man, get ready for the most boring month of your life,’ and I’m like, ‘I need boring right now,’” he says. “My life has been so exciting and it’s only about to get more busy, so if I can watch Twin Peaks in my apartment and just do absolutely nothing else, I’ll be OK with that.”

Mowgli departs from the mellow style Zanca established last year, which is sprinkled with ambient synths, hollow snares, and syrupy, warped vocal samples and sounds a little like 90s trip-hop or mid-aughts UK dubstep. The new album is sometimes just as sumptuous and soothing as that earlier material, but here and there Zanca pumps up his drum patterns into hard-hitting beats and adds jarring keyboards or bulbous horns. The opener, “Ashore,” erupts with surges of what sounds like a backward sample of a squealing sax. Because Zanca has a full-time course load in playwriting, starting in March he’ll support Mowgli by touring on the weekends.

By the time Alvarez moved to Chicago, the Svengali name was making the rounds on the blogs; Alvarez attracted a lot of interest from Flashlight Tag, and in fall 2011 Zanca became part of the Svengali family. In late January he released “False Astronomy” as Lake Rescue, and Alvarez sent the song to Flashlight Tag founder Tyler Andere, who liked it so much he gave Zanca some advice. “He’s like, ‘You should start a new moniker and start a new name for yourself,’” Zanca says. “He basically helped me brand the entire Mister Lies thing.”

Zanca says parts of Mowgli will take his fans by surprise. “If people are expecting ‘False Astronomy’ and ‘I Walk’ and the chillwave side of things, they’ll like this record—but they’ll be a little bit taken aback by the first half, because it’s probably the most hard-hitting tribal stuff that I’ve done,” he says. “It’s kind of like side A is destroying the room and side B is looking around the room and realizing what you’ve done and trying to fix it.”

Part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival. Sun 1/20, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, $15. 18+