Picture the scene. A crowd has gathered to see The Handsome Family ply their stylised and archly gothic, back-porch wares. They’ll have to wait though. On stage is an Irish bloke battering the shit out of his guitar while spinning wild yarns in a strong Fermanagh accent. Every now and again he yells out “MCARTHUR” or something equally oblique, and when he’s not, he’s muttering dementedly about weird things happening in small towns – of oddballs making mischief somewhere deep in no-where’s arsehole.

He’s booed off.

But in an appreciative way. The punters realise they’ve seen something unique. They’re just not sure if it’s been any good. It’s hard to know, after all, how exactly to react when you see Corrigan for the first time.

“I loved it,” says Martin Corrigan, fan of Pere Ubu, scratchy guitars and localised audience-baiting. “I knew I was doing something right when they started booing. I’m a country and western fan myself and I actually really like The Handsome Family, I just think that most of the crowd understood that if they give me a bit of grief that it would raise the level of the show. Which I think it did. It was funny.”

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Martin’s form would realise that it would take more than a few bemused Alt. Country fans to phase him. As the former frontman with notorious noise-mongers The Skinflits – a band renowned for their hectic live shows – Martin has come to see mayhem as an occupational hazard.

“Predictably it ended in utter chaos,” he says. “I think we were the greatest punk band ever – never recorded a record, never released one. Pure theory. It was good fun at the time but just got silly at the end. In hindsight, though, they were actually a very talented group.”

When, just over two years ago, the band split up, despite being on barely nodding terms with a guitar chord, Martin immediately set about working on his own material.

“I didn’t stop for ten minutes. It didn’t even occur to me. I honestly believe I’m diseased. At my first solo gig I couldn’t even play a guitar, but what does that matter? At the end of the day three chords are all you really need.”

That and an insidious way with a lyric that has you smiling guiltily as you’re hiding behind the sofa.

“I’m a massive Johnny Cash fan and love the way he writes with such a completely dark sense of humour. I love Jesus Lizard, Shellac, anything with a bit of balls to it really. Anything with emotional content and real effort put into it.

“A lot of the lyrics are stream of consciousness and inevitably you’ll look back at some of the stuff and go – that’s a bit fucking mad. I hate weak lyrics in songs. I deliberately concentrate on them and I would hope that, at their best, they’d stop people in the tracks. We’re a poetic race. We really are.”

The debut album that Martin is currently working on, with the help of bandmates picked up from different corners of the Belfast music scene, is due to be released by Bright Star early next year, and it promises to be very special indeed. If one of Patrick McCabe’s manic deviants got their hands on ‘Come On Pilgrim’ and ‘Loaded’ by The Velvets, they’d end up sounding like Corrigan – needle sharp, mucky minded, and wired to the moon.

“Do you ever see Raiders Of The Lost Ark?” he asks. “Know the bit where Indy comes up against the guy doing all this (makes dervish arm-motions like he’s being attacked by wasps) with a sword, and he just looks at him, takes out his gun and shoots him? That’s what I want to do with my songs – stick in things that are completely unexpected. Take your breath away.”