A nice development in the last decade of so of Cafe Oto has been its openness to dancing. Occasional nights with knowledgable selectors, and the odd drinks night with someone on the decks, gradually opened up to dedicated evenings with tables and chairs cleared away and feet on the ground. When the venue beefed up its sound system a few years back, it made it even harder to deny the music. 

Part of Oto’s general charm is presenting the music right in front of you, with performers and crowd just a metre or so apart. That means that, unlike many places you go for a boogie, it’s not a space that you can get lost in or disappear into the throng (an idea that Kode9 has eloquently eulogised in the past). But there’s an unpretentiousness about dance music at Oto which reflects the venue’s values. It’s not a nightclub and doesn’t make any bones that it is: the lighting is low and static, like a forgotten local roadhouse. If you want to have a dance, you can go right ahead, but it’s you and the performers on the night that create the moment. 

Dakar musicians Ndagga Rhythm Force, a group brought together and kept on the road by legendary Berlin techno don Mark Ernestus, are in town for three nights, and are the kind of group that resonate with the crowd and feel right at home in the venue. Their residency has a stage for the band, a rarity at Oto, but there might as well not be one, because from the first couple of songs, vocalist/percussionist Mbene Diatta Seck is dragging up friends and strangers to get down with the group. 

This is a subtly but significantly different group to some of their previous tours and some videos of them online. There’s no guitar in the group now, removing much of the melodic information, shifting the focus almost entirely to the rhythm. The talking drums are also gone, and while that removes a distinctive feature that’s a historic part of Senegalese m’balax, where tama drums provided a euphoric high point of a performance, you now get straight to the core of West African beats and bass.

The music on this last night of the residency is dry and tight. beginning with not much more than a hi-hat and a tight bassline on the electronic keyboard. Some of the percussion is rapid, but the exact tempos float in the midrange and you can dance to them how you want: in time, half-time, double-time, etc. There’s not the same linear gathering of energy you get with four to the floor rhythms, which means also there’s not the obvious climaxes of electronic club music, but a more fluid dynamic of swirls and eddies. 

No big climaxes, just steady pressure. It underlines how the percussion playing by the two drummers at the front on traditional instruments, and the man behind the electronic kit at the back, are not just an impulsive jam but a tightly structured set of intuitive patterns. I’m reminded of the first time watching a gamelan orchestra, where each player knows how they fit in and are ready to drop in and out, cogs in a machine endlessly ratcheting up the energy. All testament to the awesome rhythmic skill of this lean, mean new incarnation of the group, and Oto as a space that simply lets it all happen. 

The group are on tour right now and come highly recommended