King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Polygondwanaland [LP]

Like the rest of their albums released in 2017, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's fourth album of the year has a gimmick. This time it's not musical, though. The stunt here is that it's the world's first public domain album, given away free by the band and legal to sell by anyone who feels like pressing it up. After an album made with microtonal instruments, a synth prog epic, and a trip-hop jazz collaboration with Mild High Club, Polygondwanaland sounds like a consolidation of everything the band has done up until now, chewed up and spit back put in large and small chunks of psychedelic rock. The first song alone, the ten-minute-long "Crumbling Castle," employs microtonal guitars, layers in synths, sounds like space prog, has laid back jazz interludes and heavy metal breakdowns, and delivers all the trippy punch of their early work. After all the experiments and tricks, it almost sounds like the band is playing it safe, even if the song is a rampaging ball of barely controlled en