OPPOSITION football fans visiting Hartlepool have long subjected the townsfolk to the humiliating chant: Who hung the monkey?"

Legend has it that around 1789, the primate was washed ashore in a shipwreck and hanged after it was mistaken for a Frenchmen when it began chattering.

Hardly the most illustrious reputation to bear, but Dust Byte may be about to change all that.

This four-piece have aroused keen interest among the music weeklies and monthlies on the back of self-financed LP and latest single, Is This The Way It Should Be?

The band have already been billed as a kind of David Bowie meets Beck and Placebo crossover, and it's easy to hear the influences of all of three.

But their spiky, lo-fi sound is carved in the best tradition of American new-wave punk which has also been compared to Jesus Lizard.

The band, with Graim Hutchinson on drums and backing vocals, Garry Patrick (vocals and guitar), Velda Young (bass and backing vocals) and Paul Hutchinson (guitar and moog) formed three years ago on the back of school friendships.

By the end of the year, they will have clocked up some 80 gigs around the country - including a forthcoming visit to Worcester -and plan to blitz Europe again next year.

They set up their own label Smelt A Noise, a move that has seen this latest single stocked in music shops around the country for the first time.

Gary is the first to admit that Hartlepool's musical heritage is hardly glittering.

"I think there's only Chris Rea and I'm struggling to think of anyone else," he said.

"But I don't think that's worked against us. I suppose there is a David Bowie sound, but for me, it's obviously more of a vocal thing. People have said we're like Nirvana on stage and we're all big fans of Fugazi. So there's a lot thrown in, but somehow it seems to work.

Rumours that a cattle prod is used on stage to up the anti a little are dispersed by Gary, but he does admit to washing his hair in motorway service station toilets.

I'm afraid that's true. When you're travelling around in a transit van, you don't always get the opportunities to have a shower, so I have been known to wash my hair in the toilet."

As for Velda, the band's only female, doesn't she ever feel a bit oppressed?

She says she doesn't, but I she must do, travelling in a van with three blokes with all their smells and odours."

Dust Byte play the Marr's Bar on Sunday, November 12. Admission is free.