Slift – “Weavers’ Weft”

Ben Pi

Slift – “Weavers’ Weft”

Ben Pi

In a couple of weeks, the French band Slift — three brothers from Toulouse who make heavy and expansive psychedelic rock — will release their new album Ilion. It’s the band’s third album, but it’s their first for Sub Pop Records, so it’s the first that most of us will hear. The band has already shared the title track and “Nimh,” and both of those songs are long as hell. Now, with the album release looming, they’ve shared one more long-as-hell track.

The brand-new “Weavers’ Weft” clocks in a few seconds short of the 10-minute mark. It starts out with monastic chanting and proceeds into heavier, doomier territory, with tons of peaks and valleys along the way. The song’s video, directed by Guthio, is a visually rich sci-fi odyssey. Here’s what the members of Slift say about “Weavers’ Weft”:

“Weavers” Weft’ is the song that opens the album’s second half. There was a tipping point in the narrative at the end of the first half of the album. The second half of the record is no longer situated in the linear flow of time that serves as a backdrop for many stories. From “Weaver’s Weft” onwards, time goes both into the past and into the future. The piece talks about weavers of the fabric of time, entities who continually create space-times, each containing its share of universes. Everything that exists is written there, and it is possible to travel between frames. Everything is cyclical and infinite. To illustrate this (or maybe it’s the other way around?), we wanted something monolithic and timeless. It is as if this song has been sung for millennia (time goes back to the past!). The heavier parts are inspired by bands like Part Chimp and Gnod.”

Check out the “Weavers’ Weft” video below.

Ilion is out 1/19 on Sub Pop.

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