A marathon King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard set is a lot like a music festival condensed to three hours. The show might open with 15 minutes of proggy metal, transition into spacey psych rock, morph into a modular synth dance party, take a punky detour, stretch out with bluesy jams, and end with heavy microtonal riffs.

Yet that only scratches the surface of the Australian group’s 27 studio albums and varied genre experiments. If ever there was a band built to host and curate a three-day music festival, it’s King Gizzard.

Enter: Field of Vision, the band’s first camping festival, which took place in Buena Vista, Colo., Aug. 15-17. Held at Meadow Creek, the same site that hosted Pretty Lights’ Yahn Dawn and Billy Strings’ Renewal, Field of Vision boasted nine hours of Gizz over three nights, three stages of bands and DJs, drag performances, a late-night cinema, a record fair, morning yoga, and a sanctioned bootlegger market called Mirage City.

A capper to the band’s first orchestra tour, Field of Vision felt like the culmination of Gizz’s expanding fanbase (affectionately dubbed the Weirdo Swarm) and the post-COVID musical evolution that has seen the prolific, genre-defying band grow into one of the world’s premiere touring acts.

For a first-time festival, Field of Vision (named after the song from Flight b741) was a success on almost every front. Not only was the music consistently great, but the festival’s grounds and Mountain views were stunningly beautiful, the weather was perfect, and the infrastructure and production were top-tier. Friday opened with DJ Boogie Bodreaux spinning from Phantom Island, a makeshift stage on a pond. Shannon Lay kicked off the Timeland Stage, a small stage near the entrance to the grounds that also hosted late-night sets from Gaye Su Akyol and Ryley Walker (a free-form guitar set that was a festival highlight).

One thing that sets Gizz apart is their commitment to inclusivity. All are welcome as part of the Weirdo Swarm, which manifests in a fanbase that brings together hippies, punks, metal heads, psych rockers, indie kids, and ravers. (The band said that fans from more than 50 countries traveled to Field of Vision.) So it was fitting that The Songs for Kids Band!, a group of young adults and children with disabilities and illnesses, were tapped to open the mainstage. The rousing set included the weekend’s first appearance by Gizz members as guitarist Stu Mackenzie, bassist Lucas Hardwood, and drummer Michael Cavanagh sat in on an energetic cover of their own “Flight b741.”

There was a lot of thought put into the supporting acts as nearly every performer had a connection to the Gizzverse: Garage rockers the Mystery Lights were the first band Gizz shared a stage with in the U.S. Tim Presley’s psych rock project White Fence took Gizz out on their first U.S. tour. Australian groovers Babe Rainbow played three sets and released its latest album on Gizz’s p(doom) Records. King Stingray, another Aussie band that played three times, including a festival-closing late-night psych set with Gizz sit-ins, routinely opens for Gizz on tour. Drummer Jay Weinberg, who played an experimental noise set with Argus on Sunday afternoon, jammed with Gizz for “Le Risque” on Saturday. And former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra, who DJ-ed multiple sets and gave a spoken word performance, declared Gizz his favorite band before sitting in on a showstopping cover of “Police Truck” on Friday.

Like Biafra, nearly everyone in attendance was there for their favorite band, and over three nights King Gizzard delivered a trio of well-executed marathon sets that touched on most of the group’s expansive catalogue. Much like the weather in Colorado, if you didn’t like a song, all you had to do was wait 15 minutes for it to change.

Friday was the tightest set with a euphoric and obligatory “Field of Vision” and rare takes on “Intrasport,” “Superposition,” and “Kepler-22b.” The latter two were played using Nathan, the modular synth table that has become a fixture of live shows since last summer. Gizz has begun to master Nathan and leaned heavily on the synth table over the weekend, remaking “Magenta Mountain” and “Sense” as EDM-infused bangers.

Saturday featured a healthy dose of metal, including a wholesome moment where a 14-year-old rail rider with a sign was called onstage to play “Superbug” on Mackenzie’s guitar and absolutely crushed it. That show also marked the first performance of “Empty” in a decade — a 644-show gap.

Sunday was drag night, a tradition Gizz started in Tennessee in 2023 to protest a law that sought to ban drag performances. RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Yvie Oddly performed before Gizz’s final headlining set, and the band (plus many in attendance) dressed in drag. Opening with a mini-acoustic set highlighted by a gorgeous take on “Theia,” Sunday was the jammiest of the three shows with a particularly psychedelic “Her and I (Slow Jam 2)” that stretched past 17 minutes.

Tragedy struck on Friday when a fan, Matt Gawiak, collapsed and died en route to the hospital. On Sunday, Mackenzie paused to dedicate an emotional “Float Along — Fill Your Lungs” and the set-closing release of “The Dripping Tap” to Gawiak, a somber moment that turned celebratory. 

Midway through Sunday’s set, the band revealed that Field of Vision will return next year. “Let’s do this every year, together, forever, yeah?” asked singer/keyboardist Ambrose Kenny-Smith. Based on the rousing applause and the smiles of the Weirdo Swarm walking out of Meadow Creek, that shouldn’t take much convincing.