Cathal Coughlan (born in Cork in 1960 or 1961; died 18 May 2022) was an Irish singer songwriter and the former singer of Microdisney and The Fatima Mansions, both of which he co-founded.

Coughlan began singing in the late 1970s. After Coughlan met Sean O'Hagan, they formed Microdisney in 1980.

As a solo musician, he completed six albums, including Grand Necropolitan, Black River Falls and The Sky's Awful Blue. A fourth album, Foburg, based on a song-cycle called "Flannery's Mounted Head" that Coughlan and The Grand Necropolitan Sextet have been performing live throughout 2005, was released in September 2006. In August 2010, Coughlan released the album Rancho Tetrahedron, credited to "Cathal Coughlan and the Grand Necropolitan Quartet". The Irish Times noted that "Coughlan's mixture of acerbity and dark lyricism is sustained on his fifth solo album, that there is a subtle Latin influence on the music, and Coughlan's Scott-Walker-inflected voice has never sounded better."

In 2011, Coughlan began a collaboration with the British singer-songwriter Luke Haines and writer Andrew Mueller, resulting in the live song/speech show The North Sea Scrolls, premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2011. The studio recording of The North Sea Scrolls was released November 2012.

In 2020, Coughlan completed work on the album Song Of Co-Aklan, featuring collaborators old and new - including Nick Allum, Aindrias O'Gruama, Jon Fell, Luke Haines, Audrey Riley, James Woodrow and Rhodri Marsden.

www.cathalcoughlan.com
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