Formed in 2016 in France’s fourth largest metropolis, Toulouse, SLIFT is a heavy psych-rock trio comprising brothers Jean (guitar, lead vocals, synthesizers) and Remí Fossat (bass and vocals), and Canek Flores (drums). Now three albums into their recording career, the band have just embarked upon an extensive tour of the UK and Europe in support of the last of these records, Ilion which was released just a few weeks ago.
Leeds is the penultimate date of the UK leg of this tour before SLIFT head back over the Channel to their homeland and a further series of shows across the rest of Europe. Given that Ilion lends its name to that of the tour it is therefore only right that SLIFT open tonight’s show with the album’s imperious title track. It serves as a suitably incendiary standard bearer for all that dutifully follows, laying down a template that brims with an unbridled intensity.
As SLIFT careen into ‘Nimh’, another monumental cut from the new album, there is no let up in the propulsive noise. It is a sound that has been likened to the one created by the North American post-rock behemoths, Godspeed! You Black Emperor and And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, but here it veers more into a territory that could easily be inhabited by the English doom-metal merchants Evil Blizzard if they were somehow cross-fertilised with some of the more brutal moments of disorienting ambience spun by Japan’s Mono. You could even throw in a bit of early Hawkwind for good measure. SLIFT live is as unquantifiable as it is uncompromising.
Over the course of ninety-five highly flammable, explosive minutes, SLIFT lay waste to our ears with a post-apocalyptic avalanche of relentless rhythm over which Jean Fossat cascades torrents of guitar and synthesiser. The three men then go back in time in search of space and their second album, Ummon where they happen upon first that record’s title track before eventually arriving at ‘Altitude Lake.’ Here they encounter ‘Lions, Tigers and Bears’, sonic animals that are unleashed upon us the trio push even further into the red from the black. It is as unsettling as it is thrilling as they scale fresh auditory heights.
Somewhere in amongst this tumult lies ‘Weaver’s Weft’, the third and final single to be taken from Ilion ahead of its release on the 19th of January and which rightly earned itself a place in our first Tracks of the Week feature of 2024. In concert, the song metastasizes into a cosmic Gregorian chant before exploding into a thousand parts. Come the end of this pulverising sonic experience, our brains will have followed a very similar trajectory. It is certainly not music for the faint hearted.
Photos: Simon Godley
Some more photos of SLIFT at Brudenell Social Club
