about the cassette

Nestled at the center of Natalia Beylis’ music is an intertwined practice of listening and creating. She regularly foregrounds both field recordings and found instruments, building worlds around the curious sounds she comes upon and letting the process of recontextualization create meaning out of unexpected meetings. The picture that emerges is one of her having a profound connection to her environment, whether that is a community of human beings or the vast non-human living world that surrounds her.

That sense of connection pervades 'Lost - For Annie,' a collection of recordings made alongside artists working across various mediums from Beylis’ extended community in Ireland. She has lived in County Leitrim for 18 years, listening intently to its sounds and documenting them as they change around her. 'Lost - For Annie' is a singular document of ecological activism, community engagement, and artistic expression that gracefully implies questions of how folk – human and otherwise – understand and cope with ecological and sociological changes. Beylis’ source material ranges from spontaneous group vocal improvisation to documentary-style interview recordings, from solitary instrumental performance to sampled birdcall. These are the sounds of Beylis coming to know her home (and the others that live there alongside her) more deeply.