Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a play? Seriously, what the fuck is a Discopunk? You may have found yourself pondering just that over the last six-months if you’d seen one of the numerous posters on billboards and in venues around the capital. The answer? It was confirmed that Discopunks are a band, with debut single Tie Me UP appearing online recently.
The rest is about as grey as the ink on their posters. Discopunks are rumoured to be everything from yet another solo moniker act to a quattuordectet (that’s a fourteen-piece band to normal people). They are alleged to be a collection of gunslinger studio musicians, dope fiends, has-beens, sex machines, Fair City actors and rugby players' brothers. It’s rumoured that - in another life - one member is famed for his sunshine melodies and doing cocaine off a Dobro with Brian Wilson’s bongo player at a party in Bono’s house in Bordeaux. Does Bono have a house in Bordeaux? Fucked if we know.
It was revealed to us - admittedly at knifepoint, so take this next part with a grain of salt- that Discopunks’ engineer Phillip McGee (Kodaline, The Script, Sisqo) only agreed to take on the role after being caught in a heightened state of panic following a phone call from Brian McFadden, in which the words “comeback album” were mentioned repeatedly in a highly menacing and threatening tone. McGee was in such a state of panic that he took on the first available job.
Ger McDonnell (u2, Manic Street Preachers, Martha Wainwright) produced Discopunks debut album and the first fruit of this collaboration is Tie Me UP, a six-minute sachet of LCD Soundsystem-esque throbbing bass, stabbing synths and guitar-shanks that eventually converge in a playful psychedelic stillness, like the moment before the drugs rush and your head explodes in a tetchy chaos of love and hate.
Hi, have you met Discopunks? No, neither have we, but wherever they are, we are sure they are having a good time.
Tie Me UP is out now.