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The co-owner of a cafe in east London that doubles up as a venue for creative new music in the evenings said he was stunned that an Oscar winner mentioned it during his acceptance speech.
Hamish Dunbar, of Cafe Oto in Dalston, woke up on Monday to find the 150-capacity venue had received the shoutout at the Oscars from Daniel Blumberg, the composer of The Brutalist score.
“It’s really kind of Daniel,” said Dunbar, who opened the venue in 2008 with his partner, Keiko Yamamoto, in a former paint factory. “But yeah, it was strange to see it mentioned in that context.”
Blumberg, who won the Oscar for best original score, sang his thanks to “his friends at Cafe Oto” as he was being played off, an apt move for someone who is synonymous with a venue that has embraced improvised music for nearly two decades.
On its 10th anniversary in 2018, the Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore described it as a “clubhouse” for people who like him loved music from the margins. In recent years, Blumberg has become a key member.
He first emerged as part of Cajun Dance Party, the north London indie group who broke through when still in school and were described by the Guardian as being “Belle & Sebastian with backbone”. He moved on to the four-piece Yuck, who signed to the indie label Fat Possum, were briefly labelled as “grunge” (despite not sounding grungy) and then – despite critical plaudits – folded in 2013.
In the same year, Oto Projects opened in a space adjacent to the club. On an abandoned site, Assemble – the architecture collective that won the Turner prize in 2015 – created a studio space/workshop built from discarded materials.
It was there that Blumberg morphed into the experimental composer who would eventually score The Brutalist. “When Daniel first started to come into the space, he was coming out of a background of playing in pop settings,” said Dunbar.
While working in Oto Projects, Blumberg forged relationships with the likes of the pianist John Tilbury, the trumpeter Axel Dörner, the saxophonist Evan Parker and the percussionist Steve Noble. “I think all that had a big impact on on him,” added Dunbar.
Derek Walmsley, a former editor of The Wire magazine, which covers the same type of adventurous music in which Cafe Oto specialises, said those connections were part of Oto’s appeal. “Everyone’s on the same level, and there’s not even a green room or changing room,” he said.
“The musicians who you see play in the evening, will be in the bar later, and you can strike up a conversation with them. And lots of people have done that and then ended up creating new projects.”
Blumberg is not the first Cafe Oto-affiliated composer to win acclaim. Mica Levi, known for their work with the film directors Jonathan Glazer and Pablo Larrain, also frequents it as a performer and a customer. Blumberg and Levi are part of a trio of British experimental composers, including Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who have weaved avant garde sounds into the scores of Hollywood epics.
But despite the venue’s position as an incubator for talent, like many venues it is under financial pressure. Cafe Oto is in one of the more gentrified areas of London, where established communities and businesses are being forced out. Dunbar admits it has never been easy to run an experimental music venue in the centre of the capital but things have got more challenging as rents and costs have risen.
“I think it’s a strange position because we’re busier than we’ve ever been, but it’s still really hard to keep something like Cafe Oto alive,” Dunbar said. “But I think it’s really important to dig our heels in and try to stay.”
The venue has recently adopted a membership model, where people can join and pay a fee in order to support the venue whether they attend or not. “They feel it’s important that it exists, and is doing work that maybe wouldn’t otherwise get done,” added Dunbar.
Now “the most critical listening room in London” has an Oscar to add to its appeal.
