The Noise Who Runs - Mars Attached
UK-France duo The Noise Who Runs presents 'Mars Attached', the closing track on their ‘Come and Join the Beautiful Army’ EP, set for release on January 12, 2024. This new offering follows their debut album ‘Preteretrospective’, released earlier this year, which received rave reviews and airplay in more than 40 countries.
The Noise Who Runs is the brainchild of songwriter Ian Pickering (of Sneaker Pimps and Front Line Assembly). Hailing from Hartlepool in the north-east of England, Pickering also co-authored such Sneaker Pimps hits as 'Spin Spin Sugar', '6 Underground' and 'Tesko Suicide'. Upon relocating from northern England to France, Pickering launched this project with Brazilian born French guitarist Felipe Goes in 2019, three years after relocating to Lille, France.
Following lead track 'One Scratch Each' and the more recent single ‘Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop In’, 'Mars Attached' sounds like the unnerving and disquieting fruit of a collaboration between Massive Attack and Marilyn Manson, dripping with atmospheric keyboards and quiet, ominous vocals, all underpinned by a repeated three-note drone with a faint rattling undercurrent that’s almost the musical equivalent of the ragged breathing of someone at death’s door.
Musically, the song conjures up the emptiness of space while the downtempo, clockwork beats create both a sense of the timeless energy of creation in the universe and the tireless, mechanical repetition of human industry. After the breakdown in the middle, the underpinning loop is reversed for the second half of the song, which then turns into something more akin to a controlled explosion than a crescendo, a muted but squealing keyboard coming in alongside a shouted vocal behind the main low voice.
“This is my favourite song on this record," says Felipe Goes. "I’ve made half a dozen remixes of it because it’s such a cool tune to play around with. I think it represents exactly what TNWR is capable of. But again, you’d be playing Where’s Waldo if you can find the guitars. What it does do is demonstrate how a tiny random idea can go into freefall and avalanche into something epic.”
The song itself is essentially a kind of musical palindrome, a mirror reflection, and this structure both inspired and determined the lyrics.
“I had to check the spelling on palindrome because I was gonna think up one of those ‘preteretrospective’ type word combinations - I thought it was double ‘ll’ and the entry that came up was about the longest palindrome being a Finnish word which translates as ‘soapstone vendor’. And I was already obsessing on making the lyrics a perfect palindromic structure and it wasn’t happening in a precise enough way, or I was being too strict on the principle, so the first verse kind of came out about the insecurity of writing in general and specifically trying to have a perfect structure without losing any quality in the poetry," explains Ian Pickering.
“And then the second verse comes in like the modern day Person of Porlock from Kubla Kahn, breaks the introspection and sounds the attack about the catastrophic lack of thinking going on, the demonising of whole swathes of society and sets that against the pipe-dreams about colonising the stars, starting with Mars, a venture that I’m afraid we’re not decent enough people to undertake because it’s all exploitation over exploration and up for sale now.”
Mixed and mastered by Colin C at The Cell Studio, 'Mars Attached' will be available on December 6 across fine music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, where this and the artist's entire catalogue can be obtained directly from the artist.
As of December 6, 'Mars Attached' is available across fine music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, where this and the ‘Preteretrospective’ album can be obtained directly from the artist.
