SLIFT
Sign to Sub Pop
Announce forthcoming album ‘ILION’
Out January 19th, 2024
Sub Pop is elated to announce the signing of French heavy psychedelic rock outfit SLIFT. The label will release the power-trio’s third full-length, ‘ILION’, on CD, 2xLP, and digital/streaming formats on January 19, 2024. The title track from the album is out now on all DSPs and is streaming below.
SLIFT is brothers Jean and Remí Fossat, and Canek Flores. Formed in 2016, SLIFT quickly made an impression on rockers worldwide with their 2017 debut EP, ‘Space Is the Key’, and the following year’s full-length ‘La Planeté Inexplore’é. In 2019, their KEXP session recorded at the Trans Musicales festival became a viral sensation, racking up more than 1.5 million YouTube views and setting the stage for their acclaimed 2020 space-rock opus, ‘UMMON’, and a subsequent limited-edition 7” for the Sub Pop Singles Club.
‘ILION’ launches SLIFT even deeper into the cosmos, merging the furious intensity of metal and the wigged-out guitar heroics of psych-rock with post-rock’s epic sense of scale. The band offers a window into the album’s concept in this description of the thunderous lead single “Ilion”:
“It’s the opening track and the first song we composed for this record. Due to its structure in ‘drawers,’ with different movements, it represents the album as a whole. It depicts monuments to ancient gods rising skyward from the dusty desert floor of a dying planet, battered by fierce winds. It’s about the people condemned to live on this desolate land. And about the murderers of this world, who leave it for space and the hope of a new world, in a frantic crusade which will lead them to madness.”
Slift is back on the band’s best form, propelling its listeners, their fans both old and new, into the unpredictable and uncompromised voyage. A track that brings doomier passages to their sonically chaotic yet consuming composition. This mighty track delivers on attitude, tonality, textures and the almighty course. Brash, bold, big. Slift releases this mammoth ensemble that emits this unruly essence, packs a punch and marries up their known psych crypts, meandering krautrock passages and their immense energy.
‘ILION’ album can now be pre-ordered worldwide from Sub Pop. LP orders in North America from the Sub Pop Mega Mart and the UK and Europe from Mega Mart 2 (the new European sibling to the Sub Pop Mega Mart) will receive the limited Loser Edition on Blackened Red Vinyl (while supplies last). Also exclusively available via SLIFT’s website is the limited Space Dust Marble vinyl edition.
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.
Nothing in the band’s already-estimable catalog could prepare you for ‘ILION’, a huge-sounding and melodically dense record – one that you really have to sit down and experience and let take over your ear space. The record marks the band’s second Sub Pop release, following last year’s Singles Club 7” release of “Unseen” b/w “The Real Unseen,” which were outtakes from the UMMON sessions and offered a mere taste of the pure expansiveness on display here. 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 stretched-out abandon of centerpiece “Weavers’ Weft” to the intense climax of the 12-and-a-half-minute epic “The Story That Has Never Been Told.”
But what is this journey? To hear SLIFT tell it, 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: “This is an album constructed in the manner of a Homeric story,” 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 die and a copy of The Odyssey to get what SLIFT are dishing out on ILION. All you need are two ears, an open mind, and the willingness to be truly blown away.
‘ILION’ track list:
1. Ilion
2. Nimh
3. The Words That Have Never Been Heard
4. Confluence
5. Weaver’s Weft
6. Uruk
7. The Story That Has Never Been Told
8. Enter The Loop
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