Slift – Ilion (Sub Pop) – This album is massive, everything about it is massive, this is a towering album, exhilarating, make no mistake, this is powerful, more than that though, these songs are big. Ilion, the French band’s Sub pop debut, isn’t just about Slift’s immense sound or their properly progressive heavy dynamic, it isn’t just about the gloriously hued adventure of it all, it really is about their big songs. about the purposefulness of it all, the linear flow of time, their time, the time they need to take, to paraphrase Jello BIafra, we like long songs. 

Time travel? Certainly flavoured by the best of French science fiction, by Philippe Druillet, Mobius and Métal Hurlant – or Howling Metal, or Screaming Metal – not that they howl or scream, this may be heavy, intensely so at times, it really is beyond the relative simplicity of Heavy Metal though, if anything this is darkly progressive rock, deep shades of psychedelic warp and weft – weaver’s weft you might say, the power of the loom.  

The band shares this about the song that is centre point of the album: “Weavers’ Weft is the song that opens the album’s second half. There was a tipping point in the narrative at the end of the first half of the album. The second half of the record is no longer situated in the linear flow of time that serves as a backdrop for many stories. From Weavers’ Weft onwards, time goes both into the past and into the future. The piece talks about weavers of the fabric of time, entities who continually create space-times, each containing its share of universes. Everything that exists is written there, and it is possible to travel between frames. Everything is cyclical and infinite. To illustrate this (or maybe it’s the other way around?), we wanted something monolithic and timeless. It is as if this song has been sung for millennia – time goes back to the past!…”

Hey look, let’s not hold back here, Ilion grabbed us for the off, it had us from play one, it gets better every time, more revealed with every play, and there has been a lot of play in the last couple off weeks. We asked a few days ago if this was the first really significant album of the year? Of course it is, this is glorious, this is massive, every intense second of it, this is KayoDot-good, Voivod-good, huge slabs of properly intense immense progressive rock (is this the most un Sub Pop thing ever?). Even the silent gaps between the tracks are intense, the anticipation laced with the need to travel with them again is intense, no time to wait, c’mon, let’s fly, let’s fly sideways through time again, fourth day, five day marathon – a multicoloured machine. And those quiet bits are so beautiful, those dark blues, rich reds, those purples that are in there, every detail crafted, considered, perfectly placed, nothing rushed, no compromise, never heavy just for the sake of it, a real work of art and yes I could go on and on and on (and on), this is intense cool as flip properly progressive prog rock, we may not be far into the new year but this might just be the album of 2024 already. (sw) 

Bandcamp / website / Album details

And we did feature this footage a few days back but it is worth sharing again today with the album review on album release day

Not only KEXP, heavily featured on the radio here in London as well, well radio based in London, listened to worldwide every Sunday night

And while we’re here…

Slift will embark on a mammoth UK & EU tour this Spring. The band’s 2023 KEXP performance is a tantalising taste of the band’s live powers, which merge earth-rattling volume, cosmic soundscapes, and psychedelic visuals into a mind-bending, glorious experience.

Slift live dates:
Fri. Feb. 23 – Brighton, UK – Chalk
Sat. Feb. 24 – Manchester, UK – Gorilla
Sun. Feb. 25 – Dublin, IE –  Whelan’s
Mon. Feb. 27 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
Wed. Feb. 28 – London, UK – Electric Ballroom
Thu. Feb. 29 – Lille, FR – Aéronef
Fri. Mar. 01 – Paris, FR – La Cigale
Sat. Mar. 02 – Saint Malo, FR – Route du Rock Hiver
Wed. Mar. 13 –  Toulouse, FR – Bikini
Fri. Mar. 15 – Nantes, FR- Stereolux
Sat. Mar. 16 – Rouen, FR – 106
Mon. Mar. 18 – Bruxelles, FR – Ancienne Belgique
Tue. Mar. 19 –  Utrecht, NL – Tivoli Vredenburg
Wed. Mar. 20 – Cologne, DE- Club Volta
Thu. Mar. 21 – Groningen, NL – Vera
Fri. Mar. 22 – Hamburg, DE – Gruenspan
Sun. Mar. 24 – Copenhagen, DK – Loppen
Mon. Mar. 25 – Gothenburg, SE – Pustervik
Tue. Mar. 26 – Oslo, NO- John Dee
Wed. Mar. 27 – Stockholm, SE – Hus 7
Sat. Mar. 30 – Berlin, DE – Lido

Our work is done here, more of what we’re listening to right now…