How exciting is it to watch a band hit their apex in person? The band cero has been kicking around for more than a decade now and have had highlights over that period, but nothing has touched 2018’s Poly Life Multi Soul, an album that sees a band that could have easily succumbed to trends rising above and creating a complex ripper of a full-length. And their set on the White Stage Sunday night at Fuji Rock was a triumph, as the band nailed their evolving sound just right while also making sure the masses shuffled along to every polyrhythm and every moment of vocal harmonizing.

The group — technically a trio but rounded out live by an assortment of live players — launched into the song that made them big in Japan right away, getting the radio moment out of the way. “Summer Soul” remains a masterclass in laid-back urban funk, and the fact it laid the path for bands like Suchmos and Awesome City Club to climb up the ranks (and play this year’s fest as well) only makes its importance grow. And it got the crowded White Stage crowd into a relaxed mood. Which, quite quickly, cero twisted into a celebration of the unexpected once lead vocalist Shohei Takagi put his flute down.

Sunday’s excitement stemmed from cero’s turn towards the intricate. “Floating On Water” saw the two drummers break into polyrhythm, while Takagi skipped over the beat with ease. On a purely technical level, this was the type of performance you could build a Masterclass on offbeat rock around, but it managed enough of a thump to get the crowd bouncing along, revealing a pop core that most groups would kill for. That balance between left-field percussion and populist all-together-now triumph reared up on most of the songs Sunday, from the strut of older cut “Yellow Magus” to the punchy pounce of newer creation “The Kid From Lethe.” There was always a ton happening between the nine performers on stage, but the music itself always congregated towards an ecstatic center.

And then there were those moments of go-for-broke ambition that just elevated everything up a notch. The twisty-turny structure of “Waters” — which broke midway through to become a loose-limbed slice of rubber — built towards the extended jubilation of “Poly Life Multi Soul,” a ten-minute-plus hands-in-the-air celebration of life and all the weird crinkles found within it. It’s the type of extended jam that shouldn’t be the most crowd-pleasing part of a set — but in cero’s hands they turned it into a jamboree. And that’s something other Japanese groups wading in the river of slow-burn funk — plus their Western counterparts — can’t manage. cero turned their most ambitious music into big-stage revelry. That’s a hell of a come up.