And the Hello there and welcome to So Dijaker on on Songwriting, episode 264.

I'm Brian joined as always by Simon, and with us for this one is an Anglo-Irish singer-songwriter,

musician and arranger, best known as the principal creative force behind the highlamas, as well as co-founder of celebrated 80s

indie band Micro Disney.

During a hugely productive career spanning over four decades, he's also worked with the likes of

stereo lab, the Coral,

Sondrelerke, Tim Burgess, Arthur Leon Love, Super Fairy Animals and Paul Weller.

As this episode drops he's just graced us with a new Hilemars album, his 11th under that name, the truly

singular Hey Panda. We're very happy to welcome the wonderful Sean O'Hagan to the show.

Our guest was born in 1959 in Luton Bedfordshire to Irish parents. His boyhood love of radio and pop music led him to first picking up the guitar around the age of 11,

but he was never that interested in learning other people's songs, preferring instead to make up his own.

He moved with his parents to Cork when he was in his mid-teens and immediately entered the world of

work, laboring on building sites and in car and food processing factories.

It was at a party on New Year's Eve 1979 that Sean first met

Cattle Cochlin and the pair immediately hit it off, bonding over a shared love of the fall,

and quickly forging a songwriting partnership that would lead to the first

incarnation of micro Disney. Upon that lineup's dissolution Sean and Kahl moved to

London in 1983 and eventually signed with rough trade. Micro Disney Mark 2 made four critically well received albums

but fell agonizingly short of achieving the commercial success they deserved,

although they did garner a devoted cult following

and their recorded oeuver and remains much revered to this day.

In fact they reunited in 2018 for a series of triumphant concerts,

...