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SLIFT

SLIFT

ILION

    SLIFT’s ILION is a towering work of rock music, a steamrolling record that starts at the highest peak and never lets up. If that sounds overwhelming, trust that this Toulouse trio have you in good hands. Their third full-length feels massive and oceanic, merging the furious intensity of metal and the wigged-out guitar heroics of psych rock with post-rock’s epic sense of scale. ILION is the kind of music where you listen to it and think to yourself, “This came from only three people?” It sure did, and SLIFT’s utter ferocity is way more than a tempest in a teacup. It reaches outwards for miles and creates new zeniths within unforeseen horizons of rock.

    SLIFT is made up of brothers Jean and Remí Fossat, and Canek Flores, who first met the brothers Fossat at school. After the band formed in 2016, they quickly made their 2017 debut EP, Space Is the Key, which merged stoner rock’s heaviness with the sugar-rush qualities of garage rock. From there, things only got weirder: The trio experimented with faster tempos and bongos(!) on the following year’s full-length La Planeté Inexploreé, and in 2019, their KEXP session recorded at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes became a viral sensation, racking up more than 1.4 million YouTube views.

    UMMON from 2020 represented SLIFT’s pivot towards the celestially crushing confines of psych-metal, marked by Remí’s rolling basslines and Flores’s relentless skin-pounding. But nothing in their catalog could prepare you for ILION, a huge and melodically dense record that at once recalls Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s perpetually uplifting surge, the passionate burn of post-hardcore legends …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Led Zep’s psychotic blues-rock mysticism, and the psychedelic swirl of Swedish greats Goat.

    But reducing ILION to a list of reference points would be missing the point—specifically, that you have to sit down and experience this thing and let it take over your ear space. Over eight tracks and 75+ minutes, SLIFT unleash the fury with walls of guitar and multi-part song structures that make you feel as if you’re being taken on a true journey—from the pure oblivion of ILION’s title track and the abandon of centerpiece “Weavers’ Weft” to the intense climax of the epic “The Story That Has Never Been Told.”

    But what is this journey? Joseph Campbell would be proud of the thematic path laid out before the listeners on ILION, which is named after the Ancient Greek word for the city of Troy and, conceptually speaking, picks up where UMMON left off. The band explains: “Where the two records differ is that ILION is about human emotions and feelings, whereas UMMON was telling an epic story with a distant view. ILION represents the fall of humanity and the rebirth of all things in time and space.” Heavy shit, to be sure—but fear not, because you don’t need a 12-sided dice and a copy of The Odyssey to get what SLIFT dishes out on ILION. All you need are two ears, an open mind, and the willingness to be truly blown away.

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: Though Slift's hefty slabs of guitar and off-kilter time signatures initially remind me a heavier Om (no bad thing), it's tracks like Nimh and the crushing title track that show how taut these pieces can get. Smouldering synths burst into action, rendering swathes of distortion and tightly coiled riffs around the intense percussive backbone before fading again into the ether. Brilliant.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. Ilion
    2. Nimh
    3. The Words That Have Never Been Heard
    4. Confluence
    5. Weavers' Weft
    6. Uruk
    7. The Story That Has Never Been Told
    8. Enter The Loop

    SLIFT

    Levitation Sessions

      “This set was recorded and filmed at the Cemes laboratory, in Toulouse, south of France. The place is called "La Boule", and the structures you see behind us are the top of an old particle microscope. The sound turns infinitely in this sphere of aluminum. We wanted to confront our songs with this environment full of endless echoes and noises. Thank you very much to our crew, Levitation, and all the good people at Cemes, it was an intense sonic and physical experience for us, we hope you'll enjoy watching it. Can't wait to play for ya'll in real life, but until this day arrives... We salute you, from the deep space and the night !” - SLIFT

      TRACK LISTING

      Disc: 1
      1. Ummon
      2. Thousand Helmets Of Gold
      3. It's Coming...
      4. Citadel On A Satelite

      Disc: 2
      1. Lions, Tigers & Bears
      2. Hyperion
      3. Heavy Road
      4. Altitude Lake

      Slift

      Ummon

        SLIFT return with their phenomenal space rock album, UMMON. Composed during endless tours across Europe in 2019, conceived as the soundtrack of an imaginary film; UMMON is a dreamlike odyssey staging the Titans, their exile to the outer reaches of space in search of their creators and the return of the Titan Hyperion to Earth.

        Beyond music and lyrics, it's about "all these questions to which we'll never have answers", which dig their furrows in the humans heart.

        « For sulfur guitar lovers, Prog from beyond the grave and blip blup blop of old synthesizers. Blitzkrieg fuzz and geyser Free. Bass escaping from the Minas Morgül's dungeons, and Nostromo’s drums travelling at the speed of light. Vicious solos and assassins bends. Acid krautrock and cosmic-comics jazz. There are distant echoes and reveries, celestial choirs illuminating space. And r r e e p p e e t t i i t t i i o o n n. Ancestral voices and ancient extraterrestrial rites. Abyssal doom and apocalyptic noise. There's chaos. And there's silence. »

        The three guys come from Toulouse, south of France, and their first EP was released in June 2017 via Howlin Banana (fr) and Exag 'records (be). His name is Space Is The Key. Inspired by Alain Damasio's science fiction novels and the work of French illustrator Pierre Ferrero.

        In September 2018, they released "La Planète Inexplorée", (Stolen Body Records) with the engineer/producer and guru of the French garage sound, Lo Spider. The album was mastered by producer Jim Diamond (The GO, Fleshtones, Sonics, White Stripes ..) king of the regretted Ghetto recorder in Detroit. 

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Ummon
        2. It’s Coming…
        3. Thousand Helmets Of Gold
        4. Citadel On A Satellite
        5. Hyperion
        6. Altitude Lake
        7. Sonar
        8. Dark Was Space, Cold Were The Stars
        9. Aurore Aux Confins
        10. Son DÔng’s Cavern
        11. Lions, Tigers And Bears


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