Slift(FR) (16+)

www.sliftrock.com
www. takk-abe.ch

Every previous album by the radiant and powerful French trio SLIFT – made up of brothers Jean and Rémi Fossat and drummer Canek Flores, a friend since school days – has been a fantasy: a mix of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise and jam on themes until they seemed to lift off together into space. Yet in deliberate irony, SLIFT’s fourth album is called “Fantasia” without actually being one. Instead, it is their most stripped-back and direct album, a pointed saga about overcoming international upheaval, delivered by a band that pushes forward without wasting a second. SLIFT did not want to dilute the message with too much ornamentation. They are preparing for a battle that, in their view, we can still win.

When Jean Fossat wrote the core of “Fantasia”, he thought a lot about Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine author whose fiction cleverly wove elements of magic and surrealism into places and actions that felt almost real. (SLIFT even took the song title “Orbis Tertius” from Borges.) “Fantasia” is therefore an imaginary city plagued by a sense of ignorance and xenophobia, by the attempt to eliminate everything that disturbs the accepted order. The city comes into focus in “Corrupted Sky”, where Fossat’s narrator tries to escape disaster as he arrives there. In the second half of the album, hope begins to grow as people remember that they are more than the oppressive uniformity of their society. These eight songs are therefore about trusting in the power to resist, however hidden it may seem.

16 and over
Under 16s accompanied by an adult
Children under 6 are not admitted