Natalia Beylis - Mermaids

One of the lesser celebrated benefits of operating a record store is getting the chance to observe up close the creative arc of an artist, reading their development across each new record that ends up passing through the door. Mermaids is the third Natalia Beylis LP to find its way to WOE, following the Satie-like private piano recordings of Love-In-A-Mist, Edible, and the more monolithic, drone-based compositional collaboration with Eimear Reidy, She Came Through the Window To Stand by The Door, and feels close to being her most realised work to date. Built around the discovery of a CRB Elettronica Ancona keyboard at a local recycling centre, Beyliss seems to revisit her interest in the intersection between the private/domestic and the profound, tying together themes of nature, water and mythology and presenting them with a salavged photo taken by her father of her mother and two friends from some unknown period in their past. It's music that's uniquely both immensely personal and incidental - a found family photo; an otherwise discarded, brokendown instrument - as well as universal and permanent, a kind of grand narrative constructed from the most modest of discoveries. Though by no means the sole highlight, the 17 minute long title track nonetheless takes centre stage, an expert exercise in extended minimalist beauty as the keyboard hums to a permanently cascading crescendo, the sound of waves crashing underwater in fluid harmony. It's the kind of song well suited to 160 hour long YouTube loop edits, no beginning, centre, nor end, just the endless endless. Where Beyliss' music goes from here now feels similarly open-ended. PS don't miss the sound of ducks right at the end.