The Sneaker Pimps co-writer on Kurt Vonnegut, Bill Hicks, and Slaughterhouse-Five as lyrical compass

Transmission 375: Interview with The Noise Who Runs

Ian Pickering is a British songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist. He co-authored several Sneaker Pimps tracks, including Spin Spin Sugar, 6 Underground, and Tesko Suicide, and has worked with Front Line Assembly. After leaving Hartlepool in the north-east of England, he relocated to Lille, France, where he continues to write and record under the name The Noise Who Runs. Under this moniker, he released Preteretrospective in 2023 and Come and Join the Beautiful Army EP in 2024, both receiving airplay in more than sixty countries. His new album, Re: GenX, was mixed and mastered by Colin C at The Cell Studio and released via TNWR Records, with the focus track Just The English Way out 8 May 2026.

Title: Re: GenX
Artist: The Noise Who Runs
Release Date: 2026-05-08
Genres: Alternative Rock, Art Rock, Electronica, Post-punk
Label: TNWR Records
Description: Ian Pickering, Sneaker Pimps co-writer, on Re: GenX by The Noise Who Runs, out via TNWR Records on 8 May 2026.

The album addresses systemic greed, perpetual warfare, the erosion of human dignity, and the silence of Generation X in the face of the dismantling of post-war progress; the vocals were tracked in Teesside in January 2025, after the summer riots of 2024 and against the backdrop of Keir Starmer’s arrival to power and a looming second Trump presidency. Alongside The Noise Who Runs, Pickering previously fronted the band Transporter and now teaches English in France, where he is also producing an album of songs written by one of his students, a retired French guitarist.

Featured image: © Lucie Logier

What did you grow up listening to and what was the turning point that made you want to pursue music professionally?

Growing up as a young child, my parents were really quite conservative and traditional, so it was just radio, what was on Radio 1, what was on local radio. A lot of ABBA. A lot of country and western in England during the 70s, you know, which I’m not sure the rest of Europe took to at all. Then as a pre-teenager, early teenager, everything became the synthesizers and electronic music. Ultravox, Depeche Mode, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. There was a very vibrant indie scene in England, so everything was very lo-fi, everything was underground all the time. It was a wonderful time, the early 80s. You’ve got New Order, you’ve got Depeche Mode on Mute Records, all these independent labels that really did something, you know. The Smiths coming through on Rough Trade, things like that. So it all took off, and then it culminated, whereas the things I was listening to in my late teens and early 20s, suddenly the Sneaker Pimps came along and it fused together, you know. You become someone who makes music professionally, rather than someone who listens to music for just the pure passion and love of it, you know.

How has your songwriting philosophy changed most since your days co-writing songs for Sneaker Pimps?

I don’t know, I’m a lot less rigid and a lot less strict than Liam and Chris in the Sneaker Pimps, you know. They go to great lengths to create something much more than their first thought, you know, so they’re inspiration. They love to play and they love to really push boundaries. I’m more simple and straightforward, you know; I write and I let it go. It is what it is.

Within production, videos and artwork for this release, do you see The Noise Who Runs as a total multimedia project rather than just a band?

It’s a very, very good question. First and foremost, it’s a band, it’s a songwriting project, if you like; it’s musical poetry. But I think really you have to do everything these days, with social media, with the internet progressed how it has. It’s very visual; it’s a very visual world, more so than ever. I think it’s very hard to have people put music to a song; it can be a very interesting video, a very interesting clip. But I’m a lyricist and I like to put it together, if you like. It’s an extension, it’s another pleasure of the process that I wouldn’t really want to deny myself. I don’t know if it makes any sense to people, the visuals; I think it works really well.

Living in France gives you a different perspective on British politics and identity.

I think everybody in the world, particularly in Europe, has the same view of British politics at the moment. But, yeah, England, I’ll be brutally honest, England went off the rails with the whole Brexit thing; it’s turned out to be a mistake. I came to France just a few months after the Brexit vote in 2016, not because of that, you know; it was for reasons of the heart, if you know what I mean. But, yeah, I don’t really know if it does or it doesn’t, you know. It’s objective because I don’t have to live there, so I can be more objective about it. But it’s difficult when there are people you love and places you love and places you’ve spent time, and it’s all been messed around with in some ridiculous, corrupt experiment. Sadly, politics is only going in that direction in England; it’s headed to Donald Trump land, you know. I’m glad I’m out of it. I’m a European.

What was the exact moment or turning point where Gen X stayed silent when they should have fought back?

The 2008 financial crash. I think there should have been a complete reassessment of everything that was going on. Instead, our governments bailed out the banks with our tax money, you know. I’m happy to pay for services; I’m happy to pay my taxes, you know. I don’t have a car, I go on public transport, I use the bicycles they provide; I’m very happy to pay for that in any country. But I’m sorry, a bank is a business; it’s too big to fail. What about all the people? What about all the people who are currently struggling all over the world, you know? Nothing is happening. So I think at that point we needed to dig in, because they were only ever going to claw back everything that they believe we took with the post-war experiment, you know.

Can you translate the feeling of a society caught in a downward spiral into songs?

That’s such a good question. Yeah, how else is it going to come out, really? How else is it going to come out better than in a song? In a song with strong, powerful lyrics, with electric guitar which can communicate so many emotions; it’s untrue. It’s a fabulous instrument. I’d forgotten up until this album, you know, my last stuff wasn’t very electric guitar-y at all, and it’s like, wow. How else could you communicate about all that other than in a song? Unless you’re going to break the law, you know, it’s the only way to do it, you know. Graffiti, that’s another great way, you know. But it’s the only way I know, and it’s the way I actually enjoy, so I’m going to spend my spare time doing that, and it’s very good.

Who or what is the psychopath you are referring to in Trust Me, I’m a Psychopath?

Well, there’s a list, I guess; there’s the obvious ones, immediately. It very definitely comes from the rise of populism in the US with, obviously, Donald Trump. Crazy Elon Musk with a chainsaw, with things like this, with a Nazi salute; what is this man about? It stems from these people, and it works down through all the tech people: Zuckerberg, the Palantir guy, all these people. Sam Altman: these people are despicable, really; they’re awful people. Then the politicians, you know. I mean, it gets to something when China’s looking reasonable; it really is, wow, incredible. Tiananmen Square, Tiananmen Square; did we all forget this now?

Why was it crucial for you to go back to Hartlepool to record the vocals? And how did the environment change your delivery?

I think because there had been some trouble in the summer of 2024; there were riots due to some fake news story about an immigrant committing some kind of crime. It was completely fake, but it kicked off some riots in various areas, which everyone attributed to everybody being racist, which might well be true, which might well be true of some people. But I think really what we’re talking about is just towns and communities that have just been so depressed for so many decades now, since the 1980s in England for Hartlepool. It’s more an expression of that; it’s really such a massive combination of factors.

Before I was going to criticise everything on this album, I wanted to just go and feel it again, remember that it’s a warm place with wonderful, friendly people, that it’s been terribly neglected for decades, that it’s essentially more an expression of being let down by the system and by the governments repeatedly. So I wanted to do that just so it felt like I was objective, if you like, that I was covering every angle that I could. I’m on everybody’s side here on this album. I’m Generation X; I live exactly the same way most people live. I’ve had bad times and good times, but it’s still pretty basic living; that’s all we have. But we’re healthy and we’re warm and we’re friendly and we’re happy; most people are like that. I don’t know what’s going on at the top. We have trickle-down corruption; it stops and we get nothing.

Which writers or poets, if any, have had the biggest impact on your poetic brutality style of lyrics?

I think, basically, I would say my favourite author is Kurt Vonnegut, who’s an American writer, if you know him; I think the most famous book would be Slaughterhouse-Five. He’s very much a humanist, but he’s very cynical and he’s very dry and he’s very astute; that’s a big influence, particularly. I would say, actually, a comedian like Bill Hicks, the old American comedian who died back in 1992; that was a big influence growing up, being around that age, just as Becoming X was preparing to be written, in a way. I would say those two, more than anything else, to be fair.

Are there plans to take the album on tour? And how will you adapt it for a live crowd?

That is the big question. That is the plan. I’ve just set up an old piece of equipment that I haven’t used since 2006, which is the last time I played properly live with my old band, Transporter. I played a few gigs here and there in between, but nothing serious, so I’ve just dug that out; everything is working. From that point, with this machine, I can go anywhere and do anything. I have been in touch with Dave, the drummer from the Sneaker Pimps, recently, about doing some recording on an offshoot project to The Noise Who Runs, so I’m back in touch with him; maybe I can persuade him. I’m just thinking what the possibilities are, to be honest, so that’s the thought. By the time of the next album, which will be coming early next year, I imagine, it should be ready to tour, hopefully; it should be ready to play some gigs at least.

Are you working on new material? And what’s your next project?

I have two projects. I have the next album for The Noise Who Runs, which at the moment is called Signals in the Static, which is written apart from some lyrics. I’ve just selected the running order. I like to do that too, that’s another pleasure of the job, selecting the order of the tracks. But I spend a lot of time doing that, weeks and weeks listening to the same stuff over again, just to see what fits together the most beautifully. I just got that right, so now I can finish the lyrics, record the vocals, see where we are. I’ve been writing some songs. I’m an English teacher here, so I have English students, French students of English. There’s a really lovely retired guy who plays guitar and has written some songs, and he wanted to sing in English, so I wrote lyrics for him. But it turned out that he writes really nice songs, so I’m going to record some of them and make an album of those songs as well. That’s pretty much what I’m doing for the moment.

Photos courtesy of © Ian Pickering

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others