Darren Allison profile

Darren Allison is a Producer/Engineer, perhaps, best known for his work with The Divine Comedy, Spiritualized, and more recently, Efterklang and Amatorski. He has worked in a variety of musical genres, from alternative rock,through electronica to acoustic 'world' music and jazz. Additionally, he is a drummer/percussionist, and also plays guitar on some releases.


Darren Allison was trained at Ezee Studios, assisting on Robert Plant sessions and Tina Turner’s ‘Foreign Affair’ album, as well as engineering Propaganda, Jesus Jones and Dave Stewart.

Inspired by the sessions with Dave, he moved to the Eurythmics Church Studio in 1990, and remained there for the following five years. In that time, as well as performing engineering duties with various rock ’n’ roll legends, Darren co-produced The Divine Comedy’s critically acclaimed album ‘Liberation’ on a tiny budget. Their second album ‘Promenade’ was also very well received by the critics and Darren went on to produce their third album ‘Casanova’ which contained the three Top 20 hit singles, ‘Something For The Weekend’, ‘Frog Princess’ & ‘Becoming More Like Alfie’.

He was then invited to work with Jason Pierce, helping out with the production, engineering and mixing of tracks on the acclaimed Spiritualized album,‘Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space..’ In the following year he produced tracks for Babybird and Ben Christophers, and also recorded tracks for Electronic, Skunk Anansie and The Dum Dums.

Darren then went on to produce a hit single for Italian pop diva Elisa, and two albums for one of Portugal’s biggest rock bands, Hands On Approach, as well as mixing tracks for French genius Dominic Dalcan. He worked with flamenco guitar virtuoso Juan Martin on two albums, which included sessions with Jazz giants Flora Purim and Airto Moreira, and then, in contrast, mixed the hard edged ‘10SR’ album from Irish rockers Ten Speed Racer, including their hit single ‘Fifteen’, and bbc radio one favourite, ‘Your Demon Heart’.

Back in the U.K. for a while, he produced tracks for BB Mak and Belle and Sebastian, and, in his newly revamped studio, mixed the beautiful ‘Under The Skylon’ album for english band Candidate. In the same setting, he collaborated with Ireland’s award winning Future Kings Of Spain on songs for their ‘Le Debemos’ e.p.

2007 saw Darren travelling again, this time to Copenhagen, Denmark, to lend an experienced hand to the mighty Efterklang with the mixing of their majestic new album, ‘Parades’ .

Later in that same year, he was reunited with his old friends, producer Paco Trinidad and legendary Spanish diva Luz Casal, for her ‘Vida toxica’ album.The sessions at the Townhouse Studio which included such notables as Pino Palladino, Paul Wix Wixens, and Robbie Macintosh ,with the Millenia strings ensemble, was one of the last major sessions of the famous studio’s life.

In 2011, Darren scored a top 5 hit with Belgium band Amatorski's award-winning debut album, TBC, which was widely critically acclaimed.