Not Fade Away

CATHAL COUGHLAN

Microdisney and Fatima Mansions firebrand (1960-2022)

CATHAL Coughlan formed Microdisney with Sean O’Hagan in Cork in 1980. The title of an early album, We Hate You South African Bastards!, indicated a lack of appetite for compromise – but there was nothing difficult about Microdisney’s music. Quite the opposite: the melodies were sweet and the arrangements sumptuous, but Coughlan’s distinctively Corkonian snarl and singular lyrical sensibility were deliberately jarring counterpoints. After 1985’s The Clock Comes Down The Stairs was hailed an indie classic, Microdisney were signed by Virgin. The resulting albums, 1987’s Crooked Mile and 1988’s 39 Minutes, were astounding, but yielded no hits.

Coughlan’s next project dispensed with the niceties. The Fatima Mansions, named after a Dublin housing estate, made music as furious as Coughlan’s words. In the 1990s, The Fatima Mansions released a run of albums that almost elevated them to mainstream success – and won them an eventful support slot on U2’s tour. A side project, Bubonique, which also involved comedian Sean Hughes, bequeathed among other highlights a techno version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s