Guapo (band)
band that plays art rock
Guapo are a British experimental rock/art rock band formed in 1994 by drummer/percussionist Dave Smith and guitarist/vocalist Matt Thompson, though the band gained a wider audience with the contribution of multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan. The lineup as of 2015 consists of Smith, guitarist Kavus Torabi, bassist Sam Warren and keyboardist Emmett Elvin of Chrome Hoof.
Music
Guapo have affiliations with the Rock in Opposition movement, after performing with bands such as Magma and Present at the Rock in Opposition Festival at Carmaux, France in 2007.
The Trilogy
The Guapo album Elixirs concludes a recondite trilogy of recordings initiated by Five Suns (2003) and Black Oni (2004), which has been referred to as the "Empire Strikes Back" record. Every record takes on new musical hues and offers disparate ideas and perspectives. However, an upheaval in the line-up, which of recent years had been anchored by the trio of Daniel O'Sullivan, Matthew Thompson, and David Smith, triggered a change in course when Thompson left the band in 2005.
Other projects
Both Smith and O'Sullivan perform in the antique-prog band Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses. Smith created a large scale, multi media installation entitled "The Other Side of the Island" for which he made a soundtrack with O’Sullivan and Antti Uusimaki under The Stargazers Assistant moniker (the recordings of which were released on Aurora Borealis last year). Smith also plays with members of Coil, Cyclobe and Shock Headed Peters in the Amal Gamal Ensemble. Despite these distractions, Guapo has been maintained as a primary focus and "Elixirs" has been three years in the making.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1674152. VIAF identifies the subject as 137541418. The Library of Congress control number is no2002034572. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2015, 2007 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guapo (band)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.