Co-founder of Attica Blues, a group that defined trip-hop as much as Portishead, Charlie Dark is the quintessential breakbeat wunderkind. He is happier programming a drum machine rather than playing drums. However, Dark, a Londoner of Ghanaian parentage, has always revered West African icons such as King Sunny Adé and Fela Kuti, and thus assembled a band that plugged ancestral tradition into digital modernity.

Joining Dark on stage were Nigerian percussionist Chief Udoh Essiet and fellow Londoners, conga player Richard Olatunde, keyboardist Mark de Clive-Lowe and guitarist David Okumu. Between them they have played everything from Afrobeat to "broken beats" via jazz and rock, so it is no surprise that this union was invigoratingly category-resistant. Urban music it was not.

Most pieces started with Dark using his drum machine to punch in beats, often anchored by a bulky bass pattern, as his partners built layer upon layer of cumulatively complex rhythm on top. De Clive-Lowe syncopated heavily while Okumu played the hazy Hawaiian-style guitar that Sunny Adé is known for.

Essiet proved to be the showstopper. Playing three djembes with drumsticks, he produced a constant barrage of crisp, stinging rolls that potently entangled with the low register burble of Olatunde's talking drums.

Yet, for all its rousing energy, the gig hit a wall. With its tiered seating, the theatre-style venue was simply inappropriate. It needed a dancefloor. One sensed the audience's palpable frustration at having no space to loosen a limb and work up some sweat. In a club setting, no such dilemmas should arise.

· At Jam House, Birmingham, tomorrow. Box office: 0121-200 3030. Then touring.