King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Made In Timeland Review
At the end of the day, for most diehard Gizzheads, Timeland is merely a silly release that does little to add to the body of work that the band has worked so hard to develop.
The history of Made in Timeland is soaked in mystery and delays. Its existence has been known by fans since early 2020, when ex-drummer Eric Moore was still in the band. Sparing all the nerdy details, Gizzheads have been able to discern that the album was originally intended to be released via a festival/concert. Additionally, according to a recent 2022 Amby Interview with The Vinyl Guide, the music was intended to be intermission music for the 2020 3-Hour Marathon Sets. Well, obviously COVID delayed these marathon sets, as well as any Timeland concert releases. When the album officially found a home at a 2022 NYE festival release… COVID struck again. All of these events (and other events unknown) led the album to be dubbed “cursed”, even by the band itself. This curse was seemingly broken at a “Return Of The Curse Of Timeland” concert where the album was finally released. At this concert, a 5-meter tall cardboard grandfather clock bearing the words “Time is Ephemeral, Music is Ephemeral” was ceremoniously destroyed by the band with its pieces thrown to rabid fans wishing to grab a piece of Gizz history. With this destruction, it seemed the curse was now broken. Fans could finally dig in and see what it is they’ve been missing.
The album is comprised of two 15-minute songs: “Timeland” and “Smoke and Mirrors”. Without prior knowledge, most Gizz fans would register these song lengths with high hopes and expect ambitious song composition, extended jam freakouts, and head-over-heels musical indulgence. Well take a seat, I have some bad news for you.
Right out the gate on the album’s title track, the album starts off in uncharted territory: minimal synthesized voices and keys unfolding into laid back drum and bass. It appears we are in for a slow ride, but due to this unfamiliarity, we actually have no idea where the music is going. Synth takes over and before we know it, we are knee-deep in EDM/Techno/house music (presumably orchestrated by Joey Walker/Bullant)…OK, we have no idea where we are going, and more importantly we aren’t sure why we are going there. The track continues this electronic fist-pumping dance pulse, phasing in and out of different beats. At some point we find ourselves involved in an ocarina ceremony because apparently Luke destroyed the Death Star again. The track then retreats back into EDM (please make it stop). From this EDM, we unexpectedly stumble knee deep into some sort of whimsical soundtrack somewhere between Danny Elfman and a Looney Tunes soundtrack, only to move to a brief Animal Collective or Akron/Family chant that doesn’t really go anywhere. And then back to an EDM theme introduced earlier in the song. The rest of the song continues out just as it developed, as a misguided soundtrack that dances in between unrelated ideas (all lasting about 1-2 minutes) which generate modest momentary interest that is soon discarded and forgotten.
The second track, “Smoke and Mirrors,” is arguably the more interesting/memorable of the two tracks. The track begins with a lo-fi funky space vibe akin to some of the bootleg demo tracks released in 2020 on Demos Vol 1 &2. The song then unfolds to dueling synthesized harps with percussion pieces coming and going. The track then changes pace (unsurprisingly at this point) into a complete synth freakout, voiced over by a rapping/chanting Ambrose Kenny-Smith. (This and an exit verse are the only lyrical verses on the entire album.) The vocals feel a bit campy at first, but oddly at home in this freak-out smorgasbord experiment. At about the 6-minute mark, we space out to my favorite moment of the album. A bass-driven, interplanetary synth ride that feels as if you are traveling from funky space land, to jungle beat land, and beyond. Like the title track, this track continues as it began, with underdeveloped themes changing as quickly as they were introduced. While this track is just as experimentally scatterbrained as the title track, at its core it seems to possess more of a pulse/drive, and ultimately proves to be more enjoyable.
Gizz’s short but impactful legacy has been built on its strengths in instrumentation, songwriting, interesting hooks, unlikely themes, catchy melodies, and, most importantly, consideration. The most frustrating thing about Timeland is its apparent lack of consideration. Timeland is missing the glue that could have tied its seemingly unrelated ideas together. To add to this frustration, is that fans know that Gizz have the ability to make a loose, unacademic, explorative album that fundamentally lacks the above listed elements, while still having focus and purpose enough to ensure replay-ability and live performance potential. But unfortunately, this album did not get made in Timeland. It ultimately lives up to the “intermission music” concept, but it’s hard to picture a scenario where any “intermission music” would ever warrant a full-blown physical release. The album might have made more sense conceptually if Gizz took a page from Guided By Voices (Alien Lanes) or Mike-Patton (Fantomas) and just split the album up into 15-30 isolated micro songs, so that each idea/experiment had its own place to live.
With the above said, the album isn’t without redemptive qualities. The major wall this release breaks down for Gizz, is the wall of expected overachievement. Like it or not, this release shows that Gizz is willing to release an album without the pressure of musical prosperity or fan acceptance. Objectively, this album is probably not going to bring in new listeners to the band or even impress listeners of EDM, house, trance or other experimental genres. It will undoubtedly upset many King Gizzard fans who had high hopes for a more rock-based album, especially one that has experienced so many delays. With that said, in The Vinyl Guide interview mentioned above, Amby stated that this album was never intended to be hyped up as much as it has been. So maybe they knew it was a bit of a joke all along. A joke that grew legs that could never live up to the hype that fans created. Well, they got us.
At the end of the day, for most diehard Gizzheads, Timeland is merely a silly release that does little to add to the body of work that the band has worked so hard to develop up to now. The best way I can describe it is in an analogy. There is a house in Oxford where the owner installed a 25 ft (7.6 m) shark in the middle of his roof in 1986. Now in 2022 the shark is still there. The shark doesn’t cause the roof to leak nor does it serve a functional purpose at all. It’s merely a shark protruding from the roof of the house. A lot of people probably enjoy it without clarification or reason, but many probably question its purpose, especially now in 2022. Yet others probably get physically ill thinking about it. “How and why would someone keep such a thing up on top of their house for so long, I don’t understand or value it, therefore it is rubbish.” That shark is Timeland. If you find yourself in this final category, just wait a few months, and another album will be coming out. The Shark isn’t hurting you.