Slift – Fantasia (Sub Pop) – Have they made their glorious thing more of a metal thing this time around? Have they gone back to something that’s of their earlier sound after the thrill of 2024’s Ilion? They are as exhilarating as ever, as expansive, a little more focussed this time though, a lot more? No, Slift are always focused. Their prog is maybe a touch leaner this time around, actually it always has been lean, they were never excessive just for the sake of it, their musical marks always have had a purpose, there has always been a reason for every little bit of it. Slift have tightened their sprawling prog rock almost-jams that were so exciting last time around, are they harder this time? No so much the brilliant space rock crescendos of 2024’s Ilion, a little more of a progressive metal thing this time? Some might say this time’s more concise approach works in their favour, some might say things are a maybe little more obvious this time around; things are certainly more intense, almost bombastic, baroque, but then that bit there is pure early Marillion, or maybe more IQ than the days of Fish massacring cucumbers, you do suspect they’ve never heard IQ’s The Wake but it is uncanny and positively brilliantly so. Right now they’re intensely rocking and actually there’s nothing “almost” about the glorious bombastic-ness of it all, about the voices that need to climb above the massive guitar riffs and the properly prog keyboard runs and that village by the sea, that village at the top the world. This really is touching the top of the world music, magnificently so…
“Every previous album by the radiant and heavy French trio Slift has been a fantasia: a composite of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise and jam on themes until they spiralled together into space. Their acclaimed third album, 2024’s Ilion, was built from 10 to 13 minute exploratory escapades, often starting with doom metal or stoner rock before spinning freely into glorious instrumental oblivion. But, in a bit of intentional irony, Slift’s fourth album is actually called Fantasia — and it’s their leanest and most direct record to date. Across eight songs and less than 50 minutes, the band distil the complexity and intensity of their past into lean, agile and punchy anthems, not wasting a single second in the process”
– but then as has already been said, they never did waste a single second; there’s no waste on Ilion. This is a (very) big sound, a (very) hopeful sound, if feels defiant, it feels like there might still be something to believe in. Loud, heavy, intense, never aggressive though, they’re too clever about it to need to turn to mere aggression. Once again these pieces weave in that majestically way Slift (always) do, those intense layers of complexity that do keep on revealing more with every play. They are very much a properly progressive prog rock band, a real one, a band who need to challenge themselves as well as challenge us, this is the three headed beast that is Slift at their leanest, at their most intense, and as always, there is the science fiction and the references…
“As Jean Fossat wrote the core of Fantasia, he thought a lot about Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian author whose fiction deftly wove elements of magic and surreality into places and plots that almost felt real. He wanted to accomplish the same thing, to add supernatural touches to his contemplations of politics so that the listener might see reality differently, might question what they were missing about this plane…”
Slift, we are told, “are essentially a band of brothers although only Jean and bassist Rémi Fossat are related, they’ve been friends with drummer Canek Flores since high school, and 2026 marks a decade together in this trio”; it already a remarkably accomplished catalogue of work that the three of them have made, this latest album is slightly different, but then we expect everything they do to be slightly different, we already know to never expect more of the same although it is always definitely no one else but Slift. This is maximalist Slift, once again, as it was last time, this will be one of the albums of the year…
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Previously…
Two years ago….
THE ORGAN 