Microdisney Raised in the village of
Glounthaune, just outside of
Cork city, Coughlan was active on the local Cork scene in the late 1970s, and after meeting
Sean O'Hagan formed Microdisney as a duo in 1980. Following early local success, they moved to London, and recorded for the independent record label
Rough Trade and later for the major label
Virgin Records. They broke up in 1988, after which O'Hagan and Coughlan formed separate bands,
the High Llamas and
the Fatima Mansions. Microdisney reunited briefly in 2018 and 2019 for a limited number of shows to perform their album
The Clock Comes Down the Stairs to audiences in London, Dublin and Cork. At the end of the tour they were awarded Ireland's first
Trailblazer Award by IMRO/
National Concert Hall, given to "culturally important" Irish albums (in this instance, for the 1985 album
The Clock Comes Down the Stairs).
The Fatima Mansions Coughlan formed the Fatima Mansions in 1988, They became known for their aggressive music and song titles, including the early tracks "Blues for Ceausescu" and "Bugs Fucking Bunny". Their 1989 debut album was
Against Nature followed by
Viva Dead Ponies in 1990 and the 1991
EP ''
Bertie's Brochures and the acclaimed albums Valhalla Avenue (1992) and Lost in the Former West'' (1994). Their live shows were described as ''"spiked with expletives and Irish gothic imagery, at their best the Mansions suggested Flann O'Brien fronting Rage Against The Machine. Listening to them was like receiving a crash course in everything that was wrong with gombeen Ireland as an industrial art-rock band thrashed their instruments in the background. The experience was at once invigorating and terribly exhausting."'' Contractual issues with the record company Radioactive, effectively preventing Coughlan from performing or releasing music, eventually brought about an end to the Fatima Mansions in 1995.
Solo works Coughlan's first solo album,
Grand Necropolitan, He went on to release another four albums, working mainly with a core group of musicians -
Audrey Riley,
James Woodrow, Nick Allum - who also performed in the live shows with him as 'The Grand Necropolitan Quartet'. His next album,
Black River Falls was released in 2000. Reviewer Stuart Clark in Hotpress said that it 'confirms his position as one of Ireland's master storytellers'. This was followed in 2002 by the album ''The Sky's Awful Blue
released on his own label, Beneath Music''. In a review of a live show at London's
Borderline following the release of the album the reviewer states that "the vicious romance of
You Turned Me and the meditation on privilege and class that is ''White's Academy'' are intensely moral. Coughlan's intelligence and passion are a rebuke to a vapid music industry, his chronicles of disaffection and disgust an inspiration.' Coughlan was commissioned to create a piece for the
Cork 2005
European Capital of Culture. He created the song cycle performance ''Flannery's Mounted Head
and the following year he recorded and released the music from Flannery on his solo album Foburg
. During the same time, the director and filmmaker Johnny Gogan of Bandit Films
, made the documentary The Adventures of Flannery'' and intercut film from the live performance in Cork with a imagined biography of Coughlan filmed in and around
Whitechapel, London. When reviewing the 2010 album,
Rancho Tetrahedron, The Irish Times wrote that "Coughlan's mixture of acerbity and dark lyricism is sustained on his fifth solo album ....and Coughlan's Scott Walker inflected voice has never sounded better." His final solo release, in 2021, was with the critically acclaimed album
Song of Co-Aklan., where again he assembled musicians
Audrey Riley, James Woodrow, Nick Allum along with others such as Luke Haines, and Aindrias O'Gruama. Filmaker and producer George Seminara provided video for many of the album's releases.
Musical collaborations In 1991, Coughlan was involved in a collaborative project as known as
Bubonique, along with Paul Jarvis of
SLAB! They brought in comedian
Sean Hughes and musician Rob Allum for two further releases in 1993 and 1995. The electronic rock they produced parodied current musical trends and they often used alias in the album credits. They performed once at the
Garage in London. In 2011 a collaboration with musician
Luke Haines and writer and journalist
Andrew Mueller, resulted in the song and spoken word performance
The North Sea Scrolls which premiered that year at the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The studio recording of
The North Sea Scrolls was released on 19 November 2012. Coughlan contributed as a vocalist in various ensemble productions. In 2002/03 he sang and acted in the musical theatre performance
Qui est Fou ? in France, and worked with
François Ribac and Eva Schwabe on some of their other projects. In 2010, Coughlan recorded a duet with
Dave Couse for Couse's solo album
Alonewalk. As part of 2015's ensemble performance
Blood and the Moon, Coughlan performed works of W.B. Yeats. In 2016 he participated in
Imagining Home at the Royal Festival Hall in London, part of Ireland's Easter Rising centenary programmes. And in 2019 he was the poetry and music advisor and one of the vocalist performers in
Perspectives: Change the World - Bertolt Brecht Songs and Poems. That same year he was the vocallist for the
Mahler Reimagined performing with the
Brian Byrne Jazz Quartet at Dublin's Sugar Club.
Telefís Coughlan's final collaboration, as Telefís, began during the COVID lockdown with musician and producer
Jacknife Lee. In 2022 the duo released the album
A hAon in March and their second album,
A Dó, was released after Coughlan's death in the same year. Both albums also appeared in a number of best of lists including the
Irish Times' and ''RTÉ Entertainment's
and Electronic Sound Magazine'' chose both albums for their 2022 best album of the year award. ==Personal life==