Every previous album by the radiant and heavy French trio SLIFT—brothers Jean and Rémi Fossat and drummer Canek Flores, a friend since high school - has been a fantasia—a composite of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise, to jam on themes until they seemed to spiral together into space. But, in a bit of intentional irony, SLIFT’s fourth album is called Fantasia without actually being one. It is, instead, their leanest and most direct record, a pointed saga about overcoming international upheaval delivered by a band bearing down without wasting a second. SLIFT didn’t want to lose the message by playing too much. They’re preparing for a battle they think we can still win.
As Jean Fossat wrote the core of Fantasia, he thought a lot about Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian author whose fiction deftly wove elements of magic and surreality into places and plots that almost felt real. (SLIFT even borrowed the song title “Orbis Tertius” from Borges.) Fantasia, then, is an imagined town plagued by a sense of unknowing and xenophobia, of trying to eliminate anything that disrupts the accepted order. The town comes into focus on “Corrupted Sky,” where Fossat’s narrator tries to dodge doom upon arriving there. Hope starts to emerge during the record’s back half, as people start to remember that they are more than their society’s oppressive uniformity. These eight songs, then, are about trusting in the power to fight back, however hidden it may seem.
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Formed in 2019 while the band’s members were still in high school, Rhododendron’s Ezra Chong (guitar, vocals), Gage Walker (bass), and Noah Mortola (drums) set out to push their musical limits without regard for genre boundaries or audience expectation. Over the past 7 years, the trio has developed a sound rooted in technical precision and repetition. Drawing from the angular experimentation of underground rock in the 1980s and 1990s alongside elements of jazz, ambient, and progressive music, their compositions are deliberate with intensity. Riffs fracture and reform, rhythms lock into patterns only to break apart, and extended passages build pressure before shifting direction. Performing regularly in their hometown of Portland, OR, Rhododendron have cultivated an intense and loyal local following. The live setting hardened the material, and songs grew heavier, sharper, more physical through repetition and high volume.
Transformation, growth, and rebirth drive Rhododendron's forthcoming LP Ascent Effort (out May 15 on The Flenser). The title points upward, but not toward arrival. The record documents a period of change defined as much by instability as progress, where confusion and renewal unfold at the same pace.
The material that became Ascent Effort was tested on tour before entering the studio. Written largely in sequence, the album traces a period of personal change and internal friction. Growth is not always clean; sometimes it grinds forward. Nothing resolves without cost. Confusion and strain do not sit outside the songs, they shape their architecture. That is what Rhododendron has accomplished with Ascent Effort, a work that is not always clean but well-shaped by struggle and growth. The Pacific Northwest lingers in the background of the record, its long winters and brief summers echoing the album’s shifts between abrasion and restraint.
Ascent Effort does not offer catharsis in the traditional sense. It allows tension to remain. In that unresolved space, transformation takes form and a band in motion is revealed.
"Ascent Effort: an adventurous moor-side voyage that snaps you around the chops so ferociously that it’s tough to keep up with at first." - Treble Zine
"...a proggy metallic shapeshifter with harsh ghoulish vocals and lots of winding twists and turns. Atjust over four minutes long, it feels like a true journey." - Stereogum
Also potentially changing the temporal language from "forthcoming" to "their recent 2026 LP, Ascent Effort, released on The Flenser..."
Nathan Carson
