SLIFT Are Preparing for a Battle They Think We Can Still Win

SLIFT have always operated at a scale that feels slightly larger than what any three people should be capable of. The Toulouse heavy psych trio — Jean Fossat on guitar and vocals, his brother Rémi on bass, and their high school friend Canek Flores on drums — built their reputation on sprawling, exploratory epics that took their time getting where they were going. Fantasia, their fourth album, changes the equation. Eight songs, under fifty minutes, every second earning its place.

“A Storm of Wings” is the latest preview and a perfect entry point. It lands somewhere between Clutch on a mission and late-period Coltrane — a fists-up anthem that references John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Mikhail Bulgakov in service of something that just sounds enormous. The song is part of a larger narrative about a fictional town called Fantasia, plagued by xenophobia and the fear of anything that disrupts the accepted order. The narrator predicts its downfall. It’s heavy music with something real to say.

The album was tracked at Daft Studios in Brussels in a large live room, with most songs done in a single take. Kurt Ballou mixed it at GodCity in Salem, MA — a pairing that should tell you exactly what kind of weight we’re dealing with. Jean built the songs at home first, then brought clear, concise ideas to the basement rehearsal space where the band has logged a decade of religious regularity. Old habits kept nudging them toward double-digit track lengths. They resisted. The result is the tightest, most focused thing they’ve made.

It is dreadfully easy these days to feel powerless. SLIFT reckons with that directly on Fantasia — and then they plug in and get loud about it. Pre-order below.

Pre-order Fantasia ↗

1“Fantasia”

2“Corrupted Sky”

3“The Village”

4“A Storm of Wings”

5“Orbis Tertius”

6“Waiting Man”

7“The Day of Execution”

8“Secret Mirror”