Two badass Afrobeat bands in town at two different venues meant last night was gonna be a marathon. And it was.

The night started with the Albino! taking over Nectar. Decked out in face paint, clad in robes and cloaks, the 10-member SF collective immediately got the packed crowd moving. Theirs is a more rustic sounding Afrobeat, a traditional Fela-esk, horn-driven rumble highlighted by a single lead vocalist’s gruff chants and singing. It’s heavy-duty stuff, funky as a rubber duck. But I’ve seen ‘em several times before, and the second band of the night was calling.

Over at the Tractor, NOMO was gradually coaxing a stiff, half-full crowd into shaking loose. And goddam, the eight-man (actually six-man, two-women) ChicagoAnn Arbor, Michagan crew was on motherfucking fire. Plugged into an amplified thumb piano a la Konono #1, rocking a four-piece horn section—including the aquatic skronk of dueling baritones—NOMO played a a monumental sort of superhero funk—a big, brassy soundtrack to soaring over Metropolis, saving the day. And it was rather Herculean that they were able to—by the end of their set—get the whole dance floor moving. But you had to be dead to not be shaking something—between their poppy, horn-driven melodies and the relentless rhythms coming from their percussionists, the music was like drugs.

The high only amplified when, for their encore, the band came out to the middle of the dancefloor, all horns and handclaps and percussion. A swaying circle quickly formed around them as the bassist led the crowd in a la-la-la-ing kinda chant, sweetly harmonizing with the horns. One by one the horns dropped out and the chant kept going, punctuated by percussion and handclaps. Soon the percussion was gone, and the whole room was chanting along in unison, clapping hands. It was an absolutely ecstatic moment, and then it was over. Fuck yeah. That’s the way to go out.