Hailing from the coastal city of Ostend, the Belgian artist Balratmort is back with his second single, "Seagull," a song of hope that will take you into the sky with the limitless energy it brings. After his enigmatic debut, this release goes a long way to confirming what many early supporters suspected, Balratmort is not a character that will be defined, nor one that will be attached to a genre.
"Seagull" is a sound exploration of resilience. Constructed on an up-tempo foundation, the song stacks cool synths and bold guitar riffs against angelic background vocals, with an atmosphere that is both otherworldly and in-your-face. Balratmort's unique voice penetrates the fog, less a frontman's delivery, and more that of a spirit guide. It's described with a human openness and authority in his tone that is captivating enough to keep a song grounded even as it flies away. Listeners may detect echoes of post-rock expansiveness, post-punk urgency, and the shadowy textures of post-new wave. But none of those descriptors truly encapsulate the essence of the song. Instead, Seagull resides in the spaces in between and wears the middle ground as a badge of honor. It's this refusal to toe the line that makes Balratmort's music sound so fresh and alive, as if he's exploring new lands based on old maps.
Seagull is thematically about hope, but in a non-glossy, non-surfacey way. It's not hope against reality, it's hope in light of truth, hope borne of struggle, hope that knows its fragility but rises all the same. There's a flight stitched into the arrangement, as if each guitar strike were wings flapping against the wind, each synth swell were the splitting of the horizon. The angelic backing vocals elevate the track up into the stratosphere, it's almost as if an invisible choir is calling the listener to arms.
That Balratmort has roots in Ostend, with the North Sea on its doorstep, seems almost present in the music, boundless, restless, but full of possibility. As "Seagull" glides on the changing tides and winds, Balratmort appears to edge through ever-changing musical landscapes with suppleness and intuition.