Meet the team

Dave Swallow has spent most of his life standing at the intersection of sound and chaos — and somehow making both behave. A world-touring live-sound engineer turned coffee-house alchemist, he’s mixed everyone from stadium-filling icons to rising stars, chasing the perfect balance between art and atmosphere. Somewhere along the way, between airports, arenas, and endless soundchecks, he decided that the same obsessive precision that makes a great mix also makes a great cup of coffee.

AAA Vinyl Coffee House & Bar is the result — a place that hums with the same energy as a backstage green room but smells infinitely better. For Dave, it’s not just a business; it’s a continuation of his lifelong project to connect people through sound, story and shared experience. He treats hospitality the way he treats a mix: it’s about feeling, timing, and the spaces between the notes.

Before founding AAA, Dave built a career at the sharp end of the live-music world, touring across continents and working in some of the most demanding venues on the planet. His reputation for precision and warmth behind the console earned him the nickname Audio Architect — a title that eventually became both brand and philosophy. The same instincts that helped him coax magic out of microphones now guide the way he curates coffee, cocktails and culture under one roof.

At AAA, Dave can usually be found somewhere between the espresso machine and the sound desk — part conductor, part confessor, part caffeine addict. He believes a venue should feel like a record sounds: layered, dynamic, alive. And when he’s not tinkering with the next bit of tech wizardry or writing new stories for Phantom Power: The Clockwork Flamingo Stories, he’s quietly plotting how to make Harrogate the most sonically interesting small town in Britain.

His ethos is simple: make people feel something — whether it’s through a song, a story, or the perfect flat white. Because great sound, like great hospitality, isn’t about volume. It’s about resonance.