SLIFT, FANTASIA

The first time I heard Slift was when I watched them play live on KEXP in September of 2023. My mind was blown. The sound that this three-piece from Toulouse, France was able to achieve was simply unbelievable. Made up of brothers Jean (guitar, vocals, synthesizers) and Rémi Fossat (bass), along with their high school friend Canek Flores on drums, the three have been playing together for nearly two decades. Their earlier albums were expansive, most notably their 2024 release Ilion, a science-fiction driven record built around immersive, extended tracks, some pushing past twelve minutes. On their new, fourth album, Fantasia, the band moves in a different direction, both structurally and thematically.

On Fantasia, Slift trade the long-form sprawl for a more focused approach, delivering eight tracks in under fifty minutes. Recorded live at Daft Studio in Belgium with no overdubs, the album captures the raw, immediate sound of the three musicians playing together in a room, much like what I first heard on KEXP. The record is built around an imagined city of the same name, one shaped by fear, ignorance, and xenophobia, acting as a mirror to the present. Drawing from ideas of magical realism and influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, the band structures the album more like a series of interconnected stories rather than a single continuous narrative. 

Musically, Fantasia retains the band’s core of heavy psychedelia while moving toward something more “frontal,” with a sense of urgency that could only come from live takes. No doubt that the band achieved their goal of stripping away anything unnecessary to be able to hear what they really sound like without any frills, with production stripped down to the bone. In Jean’s eyes, it makes Fantasia their most radical record. And I would say their best.