Review: Slift ‘Fantasia’
If you ask me which album I like best by the psych-heavy space-rock power trio from Toulouse, southern France, known as Slift, you’ll probably leave me staring into the void for a while. It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
Ever since I discovered their music, particularly through 2018s La Planète Inexplorée, every new release has felt like an overwhelming adventure, a journey into a rich sonic universe.
What makes Slif is the bold, edgy texture that runs through all of their records, filled with towering walls of fuzz-drenched guitars, cosmic riffs that seem to stretch beyond the atmosphere, relentless garage-rock propulsion and an undercurrent of eerie experimentation. Their songs can be strangely catchy while simultaneously sulphurous.
Then there is their 2020 release of Ummon, an album that elevated the band to another dimension altogether. Its instrumental magnificence is both devastating, balancing immense power with astonishing precision. Just listen to the colossal force of Citadel On A Satellite, a track that feels as though it is transmitting directly from some distant galactic outpost. Or immerse yourself in the interstellar voyage of Lions, Tigers And Bears, where their fusion of space rock, heavy psychedelia, and kraut-inspired momentum reaches truly mesmerising heights.
With every album, they continue to push further into the unknown. Leaving aside their 2022 double A-side single Unseen, a release that seemed almost like a brief signal from deep space where they were still very much alive and plotting their next move, the power trio return maybe with their most ambitious statement to date: Ilion.
Formed by brothers Jean Fossat (guitar, vocals and synths) and Rémi Fossat (bass), alongside their longtime school friend, drummer Canek Flores, they have never been a band content to stand still. Yet even by their own standards, Ilion feels like a giant leap into unexplored territory as it’s dense yet expansive, violent yet transcendent. It’s drenched in dark, fluorescent textures, combining experimental noise-rock, cosmic psychedelia, monolithic riffs and vast atmospheric passages into something that feels both futuristic and primordial. The influences are there if you listen closely: echoes of Motorpsycho’s fearless sense of exploration emerge from the chaos, while the colossal riff worship and cosmic swagger of Monster Magnet occasionally lurk beneath the surface.
Two years after the release of the acclaimed Ilion, the trio returns with its fourth album, Fantasia – a deliberately ironic title far removed from what the word might suggest. Chosen by frontman and songwriter Jean Fossat, it draws inspiration from the works of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine author renowned for blending surreal imagination. Fantasia constructs an alternative world to explore themes of authoritarianism, political manipulation, and social oppression.
The atmosphere becomes electric, saturated with an almost hyperbolic intensity…
While their previous records were all made in France, for this, they headed to the vast Daft Studios in Brussels, and their goal was simple: to capture the raw, explosive spontaneity of their live performances in a single take. The album opens with the title track that feels less like a conventional introduction and more like we’ve stumbled into a studio rehearsal, with Slift unleashing their full power. The music erupts with a thunderous, volcanic energy, propelled by crushing riffs, swirling progressive-rock keyboards, and the commanding, piercing voice of Jean.
Without hesitation, it bleeds into Corrupted Sky, where any lingering sense of stability is obliterated. Every musician seems completely fused with their instrument, performing with an instinctive precision that transforms technical skill into pure force. The atmosphere becomes electric, saturated with an almost hyperbolic intensity. One moment the music recalls the psychedelic abandon of Jane’s Addiction at their most chemically charged; the next, it channels the explosive excess of System Of A Down.
The thread connecting these opening themes finally resolves in The Village – an allegorical, fable-tinged journey narrated through a gothic atmosphere in the tradition of symphonic rock. The allegorical music narrative continues with, A Storm Of Wings, a track that marks the point where the album’s simmering tension erupts. The anger here is strangely exhilarating, driven by a saxophone that injects a streak of jazz-fuelled chaos into the band’s familiar psychedelic assault. With its part protest march, and part an avalanche of cosmic meltdown, it makes one of the most electrifying moments of the record.
The ‘philosophical’ core arrives with Orbis Tertius, its title borrowed from Borges’ famous story of a fictional world gradually overtaking reality. Here, the album’s recurring ‘stranger in town’ narrative evolves into something more unsettling, transforming from folklore into a slow-burning allegory about suspicion, conformity, and collective delusion.
Waiting Man introduces a quiet sense of dread, suspending its central figure between accusation and judgment, before The Day Of Execution delivers the inevitable reckoning. The recurring chant of ‘Fantasia, amnesia’ captures the album’s central tension: a society eager to condemn while forgetting the reasons behind its outrage. By the time Secret Mirror closes the record, the focus has shifted from the condemned to the observer.
Back to what I said at the beginning of this review, I can with no doubt say that Fantasia may not be their most expansive record, but it is unquestionably one of their most powerful. The result is arguably Slift‘s most purposeful work to date.
Label: Sub Pop Records
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Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo
