Review: North Sea Static

Next up is Helix, the new single from North Sea Static, and it feels less like a song and more like being dragged slowly out to sea by something you can’t quite see.

It begins hauntingly, single guitar notes ringing out through a fog of background noise, immediately setting a sense of unease. The off-beat drumming slips in underneath, adding layers that feel hypnotic rather than rhythmic, pulling you further into the track’s strange gravity. When the vocal arrives, it doesn’t settle things – it unsettles them further. Off-kilter but beautiful, it floats just above the music, fragile and exposed.

Then the track explodes. A soaring, almost sweet vocal is suddenly thrust against a wall of musical chaos, the contrast making both elements hit harder. Just as you start to brace yourself, everything drops away again, returning to calm before ramping up once more. This constant push and pull makes Helix feel less like a traditional structure and more like a psychological spiral.

There’s a rising, rapid-paced guitar solo that builds relentlessly towards a crest before the song collapses in on itself. The mist gathers, the tension resets and through that haze the track is reborn, reshaped into something calmer, jazz-tinged and fluid. At moments it feels like a jazz fusion experiment fronted by a Jeff Buckley-style vocal presence – emotive, elastic and quietly devastating.

That calm doesn’t last. Layers stack, noise creeps back in and the track cascades towards a final, overwhelming crash before disappearing entirely, leaving silence and a lingering sense of “what just happened?”. Helix doesn’t end so much as vanish, like a transmission cut mid-signal.

North Sea Static aren’t interested in safe structures or easy payoffs. Helix is immersive, unsettling, and quietly brilliant – proof that sometimes the best songs don’t give you answers, they give you currents. Consider yourself well and truly caught in the helix.