Makeshift Art Bar – Discipline
“Discipline” is the second preview of Marionette, the new EP from Belfast quartet Makeshift Art Bar, out June 26 on Heist or Hit. It follows April’s lead single “Chocolate” and arrives with the band on a genuine run: they’ve supported Chalk across Europe this spring, opened for Just Mustard at Dublin’s 3Olympia, and headlined their own Derry and Dublin shows.
The track leans hard into 80s industrial. Hypnotic repetition, harsh distorted electronics, every sound processed through distortion until the instruments pulse in and out of focus as a single texture. And the repetition is doing narrative work: the lyric is built almost entirely from a soldier’s self-talk, slogans about the greater good absorbed from a man in a suit on television and recited in loops, the way a drill suppresses the instinct to ask questions. The song’s most unsettling image is appetite, violence internalised as hunger. Only in the final verse does the loop break, doubt creeping in about his nation’s actions and the lies that fed him, and the title word arrives at the very end, chanted like a verdict. Discipline as the military virtue that built him and the punishment the whole arrangement deserves, in one word. Production comes from Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, whose credits include Sprints, MELTS and Psychotic Monks; having seen what Fox’s production did for Sprints, I had high expectations going in, and this is exactly the kind of controlled abrasion he’s good at.
The video is its own strange achievement: directed by Colin Peppard and shot in Benidorm, it follows Sean McNicholas, a real Harry Styles tribute act, slowly losing his grip among the resort’s cabaret bars and faded glamour. Peppard has said he wanted to blur the line between tribute and identity, and setting that question in Benidorm’s all-performance new town is a sharp choice. Makeshift Art Bar are Joseph Sweeney, Alleyah Boulaich, Callum McGuigan and Callum Sweeney, and on this evidence the autumn headline tour is the right call at the right time.
Tour Dates:
Europe:
- Sept. 6 / Edinburgh, UK / Edinburgh Psych Festival
- Oct. 12 / Newcastle, UK / The Cluny
- Oct. 14 / Leeds, UK / Hyde Park Book Club
- Oct. 15 / Liverpool, UK / The Quarry
- Oct. 16 / Manchester, UK / The Abbey
- Oct. 18 / Bristol, UK / Exchange
- Oct. 20 / Brighton, UK / Green Door Store
- Oct. 21 / London, UK / Dublin Castle
- Oct. 22 / Lausanne, Switzerland / Croc’ the Rock Festival
