Despite the fact that I only caught the final 15 minutes of the show, the first—and until Saturday, last—time I saw SLIFT was one of the best concerts I witnessed that entire year. So, when the band returned to the U.S. two years later for a show at Durham, NC’s Motorco Music Hall, it had a lot to live up to.
Imported from Toulouse, France and helmed by brothers Jean Fossat (guitar, vocals, synthesizers) and Rémi Fossat (bass) backed by Canek Flores (drums), SLIFT has become one of the names to watch in the surprisingly vast international psych-rock market. After emerging in 2016 with a debut EP Space is the Key that sounded like little more than an inoffensive OSEES meets King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard hybrid, the group’s signature sound was finally cemented on its 2020 sophomore LP UMMON.
Full of lengthy, multi-part compositions that thrashed the lines between psych, drone, post-rock, prog, and ambient—propelled by Jean’s intimidatingly shouted vocals—UMMON brought the band to tastemakers The Reverberation Appreciation Society, presenters of Austin’s Levitation Festival, for a singular Levitation Sessions performance that looked like it was filmed in a James Bond villain’s secret lair. Following the band’s inaugural U.S. tour in 2022, SLIFT signed to Sub Pop Records, who issued the band’s third full-length album, ILION, at the dawn of 2024, an occasion that brought Jean, Rémi, and Canek stateside once again.
SLIFT — ILION
ILION by SLIFT
Unlike most mid-sized music halls, Durham’s Motorco Music Hall is uniquely outfitted with several rows of wooden bleachers diagonally facing the stage. While I’m always skeptical of those who choose to sit at concerts, the 50 or so attendees who did so on Saturday may have been onto something as SLIFT presented an audiovisual assault that left many attendees—including myself for prolonged periods—standing in stunned stillness. Performing in the path of a projector with a large screen behind them, the band members immediately flung the audience face-first into syncopated drumming which came at the crowd like the flaming nebulae that passed by at light speed on the screen. Watching the band set up, it was hard to believe that such a huge sound was about to come out of these three slight Frenchmen. The two minute figures were replaced by psych-rock ragdolls thrown about the stage by the ends of their matching white Gibson SG-style guitar and bass on the title track to ILION which opened the show.
SLIFT — “ILION” — 10/26/24
[Video: Ben Freund]
Careening over waves of wah-wah set adrift by Jean’s reverberating guitar, SLIFT delivered nearly two straight hours of skull-crunching psych. Asked to describe the band’s music, I usually gravitated toward the label “heavy psych.” But after catching the Durham show, “psych metal” seems more appropriate. There is an inherent violence to much of SLIFT’s music, an auditory and visual bludgeoning with a bass beatdown in your chest and a dude screaming in your face. Truth be told, I do not know what Jean is saying at least 95% of the time, but whatever it is he means the hell out of it.
Between heavier moments, Jean’s small setup of electronic knobs and dials ushered in periods of ambient droning as a Rorschach test of visuals flashed on the screen and the band standing before it. Jean and Rémi’s emotive gesticulations were all the more emphasized by the strobing lights, creating some kind of bad trip flipbook. Shifting ends of the sonic spectrum, SLIFT’s sound includes stoner metal with prolonged power chords and sedated tempos, as heard in the breakdown of ILION‘s “Nimh”. The band could find its bliss too, like in unreleased live staple “Secret Mirror”, which boasts a chord progression that could have come from Tame Impala, if only he was more pissed off (and French). Those soothing moments did well to curb the teetering feeling of sensory overload, those benches starting to look quite tempting after a couple hours of infinitely repeating LED floral fires and pummeling psych rock.
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Watching SLIFT, it was hard not to contemplate how psychedelic rock got from The 13th Floor Elevators to here, and that’s because SLIFT is indicative of the evolution occurring in modern psych. Products of the digital age, the band members utilize their unfettered access to music to create a style that blurs genre lines. Additionally, the trio gained digital clout with standout performances on KEXP and Levitation. But perhaps most importantly, they are international.
Despite “psychedelic rock” being born in Austin, TX in 1966, the genre has been a global phenomenon for nearly as long, and the worldwide scene has grown considerably in just the last ten years. Look no further than the explosion of Australian bands like posterboys Tame Impala, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, supported by a bevy of up-and-comers including Babe Rainbow, ORB, Bean, Pond, and plenty more. Psych-rock even came to SLIFT’s door starting in 2013 with the launch of Levitation France, which hosted its fourth edition in Angers in May.
On ILION, there is a pair of companion pieces “The Words That Have Never Been Heard” and “The Story That Has Never Been Told” that can be seen as parables of SLIFT’s journey. The former comes in with echoing palm-muted notes reminiscent of the ticking clock at the beginning of Pink Floyd‘s “Time”, only to abruptly take a hard dive into crashing cymbals and roaring vocals. “The Words That Have Never Been Heard” is SLIFT’s slow introduction to the rock community, only to erupt with a violent come-up that ensures these words will now be heard. “The Story That Has Never Been Told” then arrives with a rush of confident, borderline regal power chords. This is the SLIFT that has accepted its place as one of the new leading voices of psych-rock around the world. As jubilant raining guitar scales close the song, as they did Saturday’s show, SLIFT charges confidently ahead, continuing as an agent of change in the diverse stylistic community. Eight years in, SLIFT’s story has still yet to be told.
SLIFT’s U.S. tour wraps tonight, October 29th, in Houston, TX before the band returns to Europe for concerts scheduled through January. Find tickets and tour dates here.
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