UK-France duo The Noise Who Runs comes out fighting in 2024 with their new five-song EP ‘Come and Join the Beautiful Army’ EP. This dark, brooding and sometimes disquieting collection straddles the line between hope and despair, defeat and optimism. These contradictions are embodied in the more full-on electronic approach with a stripped, more keyboard-oriented sound largely absent of any overt electric guitars, and the almost casual, nursery rhyme abstract cynicism of the lyrics.
The Noise Who Runs revolves around songwriter Ian Pickering (of Sneaker Pimps and Front Line Assembly). Native to Hartlepool in the north-east of England, Pickering co-authored such Sneaker Pimps hits as ‘Spin Spin Sugar’, ‘6 Underground’ and ‘Tesko Suicide’. In 2019, he launched this project with Brazilian-French guitarist Felipe Goes, three years after relocating to Lille, France.
Mixed and mastered by Colin C at The Cell Studio, this album follows their debut album ‘Preteretrospective’, released in April 2023 to rave reviews and airplay in more than 40 countries. Earlier, The Noise Who Runs released the singles ‘One Scratch Each’, ‘Mars Attached’ and ‘Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop In’.
Guitarist Felipe Goes says: “I don’t know where the guitars went. I think the amount of guitar that ends up in a song depends on how angry, sad, or whatever I feel. I believe this is the kind of thing that gives me the energy to keep playing and finding new ways to make the songs work. I guess I must have made peace with the world since there’s almost no guitar in any of these songs! Rather ironic isn’t it? Lyrically, this EP is the opposite of peaceful!”.
Lyrics, arguably, are Pickering’s greatest strength and certainly the songs on ‘Come and Join the Beautiful Army’ only add to his reputation. Here we have genuine poetry; insightful, disarming, original and unique.
“This EP is a call for solidarity in a world constantly being sown with division and discord. So far, the start of the 21st Century seems remarkably like repeating the mistakes of the early 20th Century. In the First World War, all that flag-waving, jingoistic sense of and pride in nationality across Europe, the othering of governments and nations all engaged in the same exploitation of other continents, resulted in the most obscene and needless carnage and it feels today as if nothing has changed, save that rather than conscript us all and send us to France and Belgium for the slaughter, the big push would appear to be starving us to death in our own homes while we work all the hours of the day for a monthly wage that barely covers the cost of living,” says Ian Pickering.
“The beautiful army would be the people who reject the pathetic culture wars of populists, who proceed with compassion and empathy rather than instantly resort to knee-jerk outrage and sincerely believe that the some kind of optimistic future can still be salvaged from the slow motion chaos of the inevitable car crash in which we are currently forced to be passengers.”
He adds, “I would question the obsession of brands, marketing and advertising, primarily, on pushing such a vain, shallow concept of the individual – it’s a face-value, nothing beneath the surface kind of ideal. We are all born individuals, that should never need to be overtly demonstrated and insisted upon, it’s quite obviously what we all are. It can’t be proved with trinkets and adornments. The more salient point would be how we all come together as individuals and make a difference, a change for the better for the majority. Maybe the beautiful army lies in the forests away from the trenches; deserters, conscientious objectors and those that have been driven shellshock mad by the constant, oppressive noise of manufactured, idiotic right-wing culture wars.”
‘Come and Join The Beautiful Army’ is out on January 12 from fine music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp.
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