The Dallas Guild

Somewhere in East London, shortly after the turn of the millennium, songwriter Scuta Salamanca began minutely documenting the real and imagined details of his life in musical form, in a bedroom with little room for a bed amongst the piles of vintage synth and recording gear.

What began life as a series of musical sketches soon began to bloom into a rich, sprawling album of synth-drenched pyschedelia, as the band in its current form - including keyboardist Chopper and drummer Moshik Kop – came together.

The Dallas Guild was born.

After two limited-run EPs , lead single Men In White Coats made Record Of The Week on XFM in London and picked up spot plays on Radio 1 after being championed by Jo Whiley. Labels and fans alike were clamouring for a full- length release, but the band realised from the outset that it would take time and effort to do justice to the album that existed in their mind’s eye.

It wouldn’t just involve recording, producing and mixing every song on the album. It would also involve building the studio.

In the husk of a former fire station, tucked away behind an abandoned toy factory in North London, the debut album Hello Darkness was born. Bridging the ambitious prog of 70s Pink Floyd and ELO’s baroque pop, the album’s themes of social alienation and escape are contrasted beautifully against its huge, celebratory, layered soundscapes.

The band only ventured out of the studio, in the end, when the opportunity arose to work with veteran mastering engineer Steve Rooke, the man behind band favourite Vangelis’ Bladerunner soundtrack, and one of the principal in-house engineers at the legendary Abbey Road Studios.

Only taking time out to play a handful of select live shows – including their appearance alongside LCD Soundsystem and MGMT in Tel Aviv, 2009 – and to write the music for the BBC’s World Cup Campaign in 2010, The Dallas Guild have succeeded in delivering a piece of classic pyschedelic pop for our times.