The trancey Japanese septet Rovo's night at Tonic in July, 2001, set the club abuzz like few shows do. The pedigree of the band, the style of the music, were immaterial. It's rare that a performance is so perfectly executed, and even jaded New York avant hounds can respect perfection.

The group appears to be a collective, and all compositions on the double-disc document of that night are credited to the band, but the inroad for many people in the packed house was doubtlessly the presence of Boredom's guitarist Yamamoto Seiichi. Years after B.O.R.E.'s sudden burst from spasmic punk to ecstatic psychedelia, their offshoot bands (particularly Rovo and drummer Yoshimi P-We's OOIOO) are mining the same terrain. Not surprisingly, OOIOO are rhythm heavy, while Rovo's sound focuses on strings.

The Japanese have a very different way of defining "psychedelic" music. Despite the hippie trappings of bands like Ghost and Acid Mothers and the Melting Paraiso UFO, Japanese musicians tend to take the term quite literally, meaning not '60s throwback but mind-altering. The legendary Japanese label PSF (through which many western ears were introduced to sounds like Keiji Haino and Asahito Nanjo) took their name from the record Psychedelic Speed Freaks by Nanjo's High Rise. Performances by such artists can be quite mind altering - loud, intense and transformative - but High Rise are closer to the Stooges than Jefferson Airplane.

The Boredoms' brand of psychedelia, then, is a modern invention: tribal, long and loud. There aren't hooks to grab hold of especially, or parts to sing along to. Likewise, Rovo create their own kind of floating trip.

The band also includes Katsui Yuji on violin, whose group Bondage Fruit doesn't measure up to his own talent, and is rounded out by Okabe Yoichi (drums, djambe), N akanishi Koji (keyboards), Harada Jin (bass, harmonica), Masuko Tatsuki (keyboards) and Yoshigaki Yasuhiro (d rums, djambe). Producer Bill Laswell thankfully kept his sometimes heavy thumb off the scale this time, making the sounds shimmer without dragging it down to dub nothingness.