TESTSET was, in many ways, brought to life at Fuji Rock. It is essentially a supergroup born out of a METAFIVE performance at Fuji in 2021 that simply never stopped. And like Frankenstein and his monster, TESTSET just keeps coming back again and again.

The precision beats of the band’s recordings pale in comparison to the organic feel of their live instrumentation. Kenichi Shirane’s perfect beat kept every song propelling forward, drums pushing from behind. This combined with Seiichi Nagai’s cool and precise guitar made for a perfect foundation, like the music a robot that has learned to love would play.

But then of course you have Yoshinori Sunahara’s synths and Leo Imai’s vocals, the perfect contrast of tight occasionally dispassionate synth with cavorting and magnetic vocals. He really looked like a man with nothing to prove, doing things just the way he wanted to do them. And it looked like he was having a lot of fun doing it too.

It is hard not to move when TESTSET gets going. Some songs are dancier than others, but they all have that ineffable power to move your hips. Songs like Moneyman felt like a thought experiment on what would happen if you crossbred Stop Making Sense David Byrne and James Brown (results are quite good turns out). Other jams like mid-set Interface felt like the kind of epic, uplifting song a lesser band might close their set with. But with TESTSET every song of their set felt like a highlight, every song felt like an anthem. Not many bands can pull that off.

But more than any individual song, the level of musicianship on display was staggering. With groups in general and ‘supergroups’ in particular it is rare to find a band where each member fits together perfectly to achieve the same goal, no one person outshining any other.

All in all TESTSET’s Friday Red Marquee set has the potential to go down as one of the best of the fest.