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[title]For decades, Hackney has stood as a hub for grassroots creativity in London — akin to bohemian neighbourhoods like Williamsburg in New York, or Kreuzberg in Berlin. But for all its indie pub-venues, late-night clubs, queer hotspots, and DIY radio stations, there’s one arts space in Dalston that consistently defies easy definition as a very matter of principle.
Housed in a former paint factory on an unassuming back street, and programming some of the most eclectic and unclassifiable music known to man a staggering seven nights a week, Cafe OTO has become the capital’s de facto nexus for leftfield and outsider music performance. Since 2008, such luminaries as free jazz cabal Sun Ra Arkestra, brutal sax legend Peter Brötzmann, and electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani have graced its 150-capacity space. And in 2025, its reputation has never been stronger.
A shout-out at the Oscars in March from Best Original Score winner Daniel Blumberg certified the obscure 200-capacity performance as a global cultural institution — but OTO remains a labour of love for the hard-working folks keeping it alive, as it faces ever-mounting financial pressure amidst rising rents and costs in the surrounding area. Steadfastly dedicated to platforming creativity that exists (way) beyond the mainstream, the venue recently published a new rally for support: ‘for us to be able to celebrate our 20th Birthday [in 2028] and beyond, we need your help’.
Find out why it deserves it below, in a sweeping history told from the mouths of those most passionate – from founders and staff to the ‘chin-stroking aficionados’ and boundary-pushing performers keeping it alive.
1866-2007: Design, dub and dereliction
Cafe OTO sits at 18-22 Ashwin Street, in the centre of a backstreet Dalston enclave that also houses the Arcola Theatre and V22 Studios’ artist workspaces. The area’s connection to the creative arts is self-evident today — but as it turns out, this cultural lineage actually stretches back over 150 years, long before founders Hamish Dunbar and Keiko Yamamoto moved in.
Keiko Yamamoto (co-founder): The building itself used to be an old paint mixing company, owned by Reeves and Sons, from 1866 [until 1954].
Abby Thomas (archivist, 2015-present): If you stand way back in the street, you can still see the sign. It’s beautiful.
Yamamoto: I’m not entirely sure what happened since then, until we noticed the place. We were told that it used to be a computer room for council workers. We remember peeking in through a crack of the boarded windows — we could see desks, and partitioned walls, and lots of cables on the floor.
John Chantler (senior producer, 2011-2014): The general history is pretty hazy. The whole building was originally a print house, but it stopped being that a long time before OTO moved in. We learnt more recently that it used to be the site of dub and reggae parties in the ’80s.
Thomas, A.: A friend who used to work here found a poster. I think [Jah] Shaka played here.
James Dunn (audio engineer, 2008-present): It’s connected to this broader Dalston musical history. There used to be an old music hall called the Four Aces Club [next to Dalston Junction station], and in the ’70s, Bob Marley played there. Then it had a kind of dub thing going on. Then, in the ’90s, it was a rave club called the Labrynth. But when I first moved to the area, it was derelict.
Yamamoto: It was empty and boarded off when we found it. We were walking around and simply noticed the big glass windows, boarded up in the dark street. They looked quite attractive, and the building looked interesting.
2008: Music cafe under construction
In the early days of Cafe OTO, Hamish and Keiko worked tirelessly to transform the run-down space into a functional cafe and DIY performing arts venue. They named the spot ‘OTO’ after the Japanese word for ‘sound’ or ‘noise’, and began booking acts without hesitation while serving up smoked mackerel from the local Polish deli.
Thomas, A.: Keiko was cooking at the Bonnington Centre Cafe in Vauxhall, and people were putting gigs on in the function room above it. So she had the idea that she could join those communities and cook food, and put on events.
Yamamoto: I was boiling sushi rice in the kitchen downstairs, and then going upstairs to listen to the music playing. I was very inspired by what Adam Bohman was doing with obscure objects, coiled springs and contact mics. It was a community-run place, and there was a regular improvisation evening happening every time I hosted. I was young and naive and longing to fit into that kind of co-op community, I guess.
Chantler: They were not really opening [Cafe OTO] to be a cafe. The plan was always about it being a place for music.
Yamamoto: I grew up in Japan going to lots of coffee shops where people listen to records and read books. I always loved that silence created by the mutual respect towards music, the space and atmosphere.
We were living near the Rio Cinema and occasionally putting on ad hoc shows in places like Uncle Sam’s [now The Haggerston] and BG’s Nite Club [formerly behind The Shacklewell Arms] in our free time, while doing part-time jobs. We didn’t have any money, so we got a loan from a local community investment charity body after attending a half-year course in business management.
Dunn: The first time I stepped foot in here was about March 2008 — a friend forwarded me an email saying they were looking for engineers for a venue starting up. Bit of a crazy idea, but exciting. I remember it being empty, like a blank space.
Chantler: I was like ‘I wonder what this place is?’. I went to visit and it was still a building site, full of rubble. Shit everywhere.
Yamamoto: We did everything we could to make it ourselves. We had to clean and tidy, rewire the electricity, build toilets, and make a kitchen wall. With the help of a local builder and a group of Polish carpenters, we made our bar (still standing solidly) ourselves. We had such a busy time that we slept on the kitchen floor some nights. After we opened, I’d be up very early every morning to bake four to five whole cakes and serve filter coffee while booking shows under the counter.
Saya (musician, Tenniscoats): John Chantler and Carina Thoen organised Cafe OTO’s first show [on 13th April, 2008]. It was my solo show, but I wasn’t used to solo playing, so I was nervous. I cried with relief, and I noticed that Keiko cried too.
Stewart Lee (comedian): I went to see something there in about the first week, and it seemed so rough and ready. I didn’t really know if it was going to take off. The lighting was just the strip lighting already in the room. And there were little junior school chairs everywhere. It almost looked like it had been squatted.
Thurston Moore (musician, Sonic Youth): I recall walking in and being taken aback that the performance area was simply on the floor with a few tables and chairs surrounding it.
Evan Parker (musician): There is a state beyond ‘shabby chic’ that is a simple statement of economic priorities. I remember the response of a friend seeing the place for the first time, looking at the concrete floor and the rejected school furniture and muttering ‘Perfect, perfect…’
Dunn: The vibe was right. It’s just on the street, and there were candles on the tables.
Chantler: Hamish and Keiko made this atmosphere real. They got the basic shit right from the beginning.
2012: ‘The coolest venue in London’
By the end of its first year, Cafe OTO was already hosting concerts seven nights a week — but it was in 2012 that it cemented its place on the map after Vogue Italia unexpectedly declared it ‘the coolest venue in London’. By this point, OTO had built a unique identity for itself, owing to its passionate community of performers and patrons, unorthodox set-up and performance space.
Alexis Taylor (musician, Hot Chip): Before it was there, there weren’t many places [in London] that regularly did ‘improvised’ music. There was the Red Rose Club in Finsbury Park, where Spring Heel Jack would run a small improv night for years. But I feel like they, and the musicians they worked with, all just moved over to Cafe OTO when it opened.
Femi Adeyemi (NTS Radio founder): It stood out from anywhere else in Dalston. It became a go-to place. One of the first things that drew me in was the music that was getting played inside – like a low hum of experimental music running through it 24/7. And it was always very welcoming for everyone.
Dunn: I remember very early conversations about the kinds of stuff we’d play on the jukebox: ‘Do we have to make any concessions towards being a bar after the show, or something?’ Hamish was just like ‘No. We want to promote this kind of music.’
Moore: For me, personally, it offered impeccable programming with regards to contemporary experimental rock, jazz, folk, and ‘world’ music. I felt privileged to be able to access this place sometimes four nights a week. I became a regular, I dare say. I’d constantly see others like myself in attendance checking out the new and old with an investigative regard.
Parker: The culture [became] hip to a degree, which always attracts an interesting mix of people.
Lee: There are guys of a certain age who are music obsessives, on their own; a lot of older women in little groups; a lot of young people… I got in the queue early last night, and there were people reading Graham Greene and The Wire, and the magazine of the Philip Larkin Society. There are people who work in the BBC archives there, looking for lost tapes, but there are also people dancing to free jazz because they just want to have a good time!
Fielding Hope (senior producer, 2014-2025): The overwhelming majority of the shows do not have a stage, meaning the artists feel very close to the audience. Some people say it reminds them of playing in their living room.
Moore: It’s unpretentious and socialist in nature, where all involved co-exist in equal stature: an ideology infusing the best of the music there.
Taylor: You feel so close to the music. And the sound’s really good in there. You’re not only hearing it through a PA system, you’re also hearing their instruments — at a volume where you can feel what they’re doing from their drum kit, or their double-bass, or whatever.
Parker: The sound system is tuned to the scale of the place. And the engineers are all great craftsmen. All of this has been built by real teamwork.
Suzanne Ciani (musician): It’s a very warm and dark space, and I remember this feeling of cosiness. And I love that kind of intimate concert where you’re just right there with everybody, and people can see the wires and the lights flashing up, telling you what’s going on in the brains of the machines [being played].
Thomas, A.: One of my favourite moments of a gig is when you’re listening to the music and you see people walk past and stop, and cup their ears to the window.
Taylor: You often see people spilling outside to have a drink or whatever in the intervals. But you also see people staring in through the windows, trying to grasp what’s going on inside.
Hope: We try to take the windows as a philosophy in themselves – that the space should be in dialogue constantly with what happens outside.
An international touring destination
As Cafe OTO levelled up over the years, it became an international touring destination for free jazz and experimental music performers – inspiring concerts by everyone from Yoko Ono (2014) to Sun Ra Arkestra (2009-2016) to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore (2012-2025). Some of the venue’s biggest fans recall their favourite live moments below, including the venue’s famous multi-night residencies, in which artists perform different sets or unique collaborations over a series of successive evenings.
Lee: I did the John Cage [avant-garde] stuff a couple of times [in 2012 and 2016]. I’m not really a musician, I just have a monotonous voice that works well as a counterpoint to improvised music. I’ve hosted anniversary shows of The Ex, a Dutch free jazz hardcore punk-era kind of band, as well — and I’m doing their anniversary shows in the Autumn in 2025.
Moore: I remember Peter Brötzmann with Steve Noble and John Edwards, always just tearing shit up. And ‘Sharpen Your Needles’ was a series presented by Evan Parker and David Toop where they’d play records and discuss their wonderment. I’ll also never forget when Alex Ward played Sonic Youth’s ‘White Cross’ for me there on my birthday – a surprise and a total delight.
Adeyemi: I went to see Amina Claudine Myers [in 2025], and I don’t know if she had ever even played in the UK before. She’s a jazz musician in her 80s with a lot of blues references. And it was such an amazing experience. I didn’t even know she was still alive. You never think you’ll get to see someone like that.
Ciani: I started out some 50 or 60 years ago, but the Cafe OTO shows [in 2017] were my first London concerts. I remember going down that little, off-the-main-road loop to find the cafe situated in this quiet little corner, and it was just a magical place. We did two concerts in one night!
Hope: When I think of the most special performances at OTO I always think of our residencies, where artists are given a chance to play over several nights. A few that come to mind are the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Anthony Braxton residencies, which were distinct and radical in their own way…
Pat Thomas (musician): It’s a very special thing to do a residency in England. It’s something we musicians really like – to be in the same space for more than one night, to really develop things, is great.
Lee: By giving visiting acts like Joe McPhee, who was there the other week from the States, three nights — and trying to make an incentive to the audience that each night will be different, they seem to have managed to make it work. And that’s superb.
Thomas, P.: It’s a challenge, as well. I was fortunate enough to do a four-day residency last year. I said yes, and then I sort of thought to myself: ‘What am I doing, this is mad!’, because I’d chosen a lot to [perform over the four nights] – like Duke Ellington, [Thelonious] Monk, Tom Wiggins.
Yamamoto: One three-day residency with Sun Ra Arkestra got extended by another two nights after the band were grounded due to the Icelandic volcano erupting [in 2010]. The whole thing was so special.
Taylor: There was a great group atmosphere to it [when I saw them]. Lots of singing. And Marshall Allen playing a synthesised, Casio-style sax. What I really remember, though, is that one of the saxophonists was doing somersaults on his way to the stage, which was really impressive because he was in his early ’70s.
A home for ‘strange’ music
Cafe OTO is also known for housing rather eclectic branches of music you’ll find nowhere else in the capital. These range from Tuareg guitar bands from the Sahara and German glitch music pioneers to performers of Zeuhl music from Japan. Only at Cafe OTO will you find Charles Hayward performing a 30-minute drum roll alongside DJ Scotch Egg’s Game-Boy-and-megaphone music. The unconventional is a part of the venue’s identity, and nothing is too ‘out there’.
Parker: The catch-all term ‘jazz and free improvisation’ would describe most of the early programming. But it has become more diverse – avant rock, notated music, new folk…
Hope: They have an open-minded approach to what is often called ‘difficult’ music. We’ve seen artists perform with apples, bicycle pumps, trampolines…
Dunn: Otomo Yoshihide used a credit card once, with a turntable. It was fantastic. Really nice show.
Taylor: Evicshen, a noise music performer, was using clip-on false nails to play records. The nails were acting as the styli, so she could put down multiple styli on the disc and make interesting sounds.
Moore: I joke (sort of) about preferring ‘chin-stroking’ music, identified by the serious aficionado sitting in a chair, legs crossed, pint of lager in hand, the other hand stroking the chin in full response to the experimental sounds at play.
Ciani: My show was quadraphonic. With the Buchla [synthesiser], you can put the sound in one speaker, and as it moves, your [closest] speaker shuts off and another one turns on in the distance — so you’re able to feel the dynamics of the space no matter where you are. It’s a really wonderful, immersive phenomenon.
Thomas, A.: We used to run a choir in the project space, and our facilitator-teacher got us to sing with all the Uber bikes that come past. One time, she gave 50 quid to these two Brazilian moped guys and got them to be by the door and rev as we all just sang a drone with them.
Hope: One of the last performances by the late [American free jazz musician] Charles Gayle was in a trio with John Edwards and Mark Sanders. Charles was hammering on the piano, but then leaned back a bit and started howling. Out of nowhere, the audience joined him, creating a kind of frenzied, feral cacophony.
Taylor: I saw Charles Hayward open for This Is Not This Heat, and some of his set involved pushing a speaker around in a baby’s pushchair, with various loops and drones coming out.
Dunn: David Thomas from Pere Ubu was wearing this blood red apron and playing the accordion, and at the end of the gig, when the band were still playing, he packed all of his stuff up and walked out of the front door into a taxi and drove off. And everybody followed him out as the band continued playing, cheering him as he drove off. Best way to end a gig ever.
Taylor: The most fascinating set I saw there was by Neil Hagerty from Royal Trux. He was booked to play two sets, and clearly, the audience – including me – would have expected those to be two different sets. But instead, he played the first set, and then after a 15-minute break, he played all the same music again. People started trying to find ‘spot the difference’ style moments, saying things like ‘I’ve noticed that the guitar sounds ever so slightly different’.
I started to believe it was based on this collection of fiction by Borges called Labyrinths that I knew Hagerty had liked, in which there’s a story about someone re-writing Cervantes’ Don Quixote word-for-word I’d come to the conclusion that he was trying to replay everything note-for-note as a conceptual art piece. He just said, ‘No, I just thought there’d be a different audience there’.
2025: A shout-out at the Oscars
The venue’s biggest pop culture moment came during the 2025 Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, when London musician Daniel Blumberg accepted the prize for Best Original Score for his work on The Brutalist. In his speech, he thanked the ‘radical musicians’ he’d worked with – and his friends at Cafe OTO.
OTO’s role in Blumberg’s Oscars’ triumph is significant: not only is it the place the composer claims to have first witnessed improvised music, but many of the venue’s native musicians would also feature in the score for the Brady Corbet feature. Either way, the name-drop was a great boon for the humble Dalston arts space.
Yamamoto: Daniel is a friend of OTO, he’s been a part of the OTO community for a while and has always been supportive.
Chantler: I was working there when he first showed up. We didn’t know who he was. This kid turns up and says, ‘I really like it here, I wanna be part of this thing’.
Brady Corbet (filmmaker, The Brutalist): I don’t remember much of my first time at OTO 11 years ago because Daniel, Stacy [Martin, actress], and I were all pretty sloshed. But it was the beginning of a long friendship and collaboration with them both, so it was a meaningful occasion.
Taylor: He sort of lived there for a time. He’d go there every day, or he was making art in a studio that was part of Cafe OTO’s second space. In lockdown, I did a live-streamed gig to raise money for the venue, and Daniel was one of the other people on the bill. He was playing songs on the piano and banging the mic on the stool to make interesting noises.
Corbet: The very first track recorded for The Brutalist was recorded back in 2020, if memory serves me. It’s called ‘Construction’ on the album, and it was recorded entirely at Cafe OTO.
Taylor: Daniel’s bandmate, Billy Steiger, is the in-house sound engineer, but also is often playing violin and improvising with Daniel. I think of Daniel as having found his people through Cafe OTO — people to make this particular kind of music with.
Corbet: It was very moving for me to see my extended family in Daniel being recognised for his uncompromising and visionary work. We were additionally both so proud of our contributors: John Tilbury, Sophie Agnel, Steve Noble, Evan Parker, Pierre Borel, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, Simon Sieger, Axel Dörner, Peter Walsh and the entire extraordinary ensemble. Without Cafe OTO, I think it would have been a very different process and a very different result.
Thomas, P.: Credit to Daniel, because he didn’t have to [name-check the venue] like that. It’s definitely helped Cafe OTO. After the Oscars, a lot of extra people started coming — all these film buffs. The next day, I was having a coffee and I saw this TV camera crew turning up. I thought ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’…
It just exploded for a few months. I mean, the last time I played Cafe OTO was in April with Thurston Moore and Evan Parker, and in the audience… Beck turned up. I couldn’t believe it myself!
The future of Cafe OTO
For all its unlikely fame and following, Cafe OTO remains a fixedly independent institution — operating without major funding or sponsorship beyond the patronage of its members and followers. ‘We exist as part of a small and fragile international network of spaces dedicated to this music,’ the venue said in a recent plea for continued support, targeting its 20th anniversary in 2028.
Adeyemi: In 2014, 2015, and 2016, things started to become more expensive, and there definitely seemed to be this effort going into closing down a lot of the music venues in this part of London. Dalston’s a different place now.
Dunn: There are a lot less places than there used to be.
Hans-Roachim Roedelius (musician/performer): On the globe, more and more, everything is about success and profit – not so much, anymore, about art.
Lee: Arts funding’s been cut everywhere. So, increasingly, it’s falling to enthusiastic individuals to try to keep the cultural spirit of the country alive. It’s really amazing to see what Cafe OTO is doing in the face of what often seems like a deliberate attempt to destroy the arts in Britain.
Yamamoto: The rising cost of living and everything is hard. We would like to be a platform for emerging artists and DIY, grassroots performers, but presenting outside-of-the-mainstream happenings often faces challenges in this capitalistic world.
Chantler: Cafe OTO’s economy has always been fragile. There’s always lots of thinking and talking about how we survive.
Hope: The main way we continue to stay afloat is our membership programme. If people can get one of those and come to shows, you’ll keep us alive!
Thomas, A.: You get big discounts. The shows are almost half price at that point. And it directly feeds into us being able to put on those shows that we think might be a little more risky.
And why should Cafe OTO be supported?
Lee: It’s affordable, which, let’s not forget, most things aren’t anymore. I think people invest in it because they appreciate that it is a labour of love. It’s a place where you can take a chance on things and you don’t feel like you’re being fleeced, because you can see that the venue is flying by the seat of its pants.
Adeyemi: They haven’t tried to change because the area’s changing. They haven’t changed their programming for anyone. It’s a unique space in a city where great live music venues are dying, and it’s thanks to places like Dalston Superstore, Cafe OTO and NTS that Dalston still has a level of authenticity to it.
Hope: Similar spaces now [exist elsewhere in London], like Hundred Years Gallery, Avalon Cafe, Ormside Projects, and Spanners. But I think what’s special about us is how long we've been able to stay open.
Saya: Artists want to play Cafe OTO because it is a very happy and rewarding place, and the people there have understanding, depth of acceptance, and curiosity.
Roedelius: It’s a good place to bring people together for any sort of gathering or communication, especially for artists from abroad to meet their listeners.
Taylor: It’s a really important venue in London. There aren’t many other places that would offer a nightly curation of interesting experimental and outsider music that you could rely on to go and hear unusual, left-of-centre performances. You know you’ll get something interesting there all the time.
Adeyemi: It’s also a brilliant record store. I’m always trying to pop in and see what they have.
Taylor: It’s the place I keep going to. I think it’s really one of the best there is in the world. And I’m very grateful it’s just there, in Dalston.
Corbet: At times, I’ve considered moving to London from New York to be nearer its proximity. Beyond having some of the most worthwhile programming in the world, it is truly unique for its extraordinary diversity across many generations of audiophiles. There is no institution that I would be more committed to supporting and protecting, in perpetuity.