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Bristol Jazz Band, Run Logan Run, Are Set To Headline An Amorphic Jazz Night At The Invisible Wind Factory's Substation
The Low Down:
What: Amorphic Jazz: Run Logan Run.
Where: IWF Substation.
When: Thursday the 9th of March 2023 - 7pm.
Tickets: Final release tickets are available for £12.50.
At the forefront of Bristol’s contribution to the pulsing new UK jazz scene, Run Logan Run bring their raw, visceral energy music to IWF Substation on Thursday the 9th of March for an installment of Amorphic Jazz Club, and as part of a UK tour promoting their new album Nature Will Take Care of You.
Support for this show comes from folk jazz songstress Annie Gardiner, saxophonist & composer Nick Branton’s new trio venture KIPPERS, and Anti Social Jazz Club on the decks keeping the vibes high till late.
Run Logan Run's line-up for the night will include Andrew Neil Hayes on the Saxophone, Matt Brown on Drums, Annie Gardiner for the Vocals, Dan Messore on the Guitar, and Beth O’Lenahan on Bass.
About Run Logan Run
An alchemical fusion of surging, polyrhythmic alt-breakbeats and screaming guttural saxophone, since forming in 2016 the duo (Andrew Neil Hayes, saxophones and Matt Brown, drums) have earned a reputation for explosive live performances, full of raw power and visceral energy.
Run Logan Run continue their link-up with Worm Discs and producer Riaan Vosloo on their latest album, 2022’s Nature Will Take Care Of You – a monumental slab of contemporary energy music that draws on the heavy soul of David Axelrod and the fiery commitment of Archie Shepp.
Working with an expanded line-up that includes singer Annie Gardiner (daughter of the late guitarist Ricky Gardiner, who played and collaborated with Iggy Pop and David Bowie) plus a string quartet and a brass section, saxophonist Andrew Neil Hayes and drummer Matt Brown have once again steered Run Logan Run in a dramatic new direction.
Churning, future-forwards and emotionally tuned in, Nature Will Take Care Of You reaches out towards propulsive rock and psychedelic soul, while keeping one foot in the radical jazz-not-jazz of Bristol’s ever fertile improv scene.
The core of Run Logan Run’s sound is the dynamic conjunction of Matt Brown’s agile and powerful drums with Andrew Hayes’ looping, pedal-treated sax motifs. No matter how the duo augment and enhance their music, the kernel of their art has always been the spiralling energies generated by this essential musical relationship.
Explorations of repetition, dissolution and dervish-like disorientation remain a central part of their project, with Brown weaving a tight rhythmic armature for Hayes’ unshackled journeys into sound.
Though they began within Bristol’s improvised music scene, their vision has been increasingly structured and expansive, and the arrival of producer and bassist Riaan Vosloo (Nostalgia 77) for 2021’s For a Brief Moment We Could Smell The Flowers allowed to them move outwards to explore pulsing, cinematic synth-scapes. Vosloo is behind the boards again on Nature Will Take Care of You – and the duo’s vision has broadened a step further.
‘This is essentially a big band album’ says Andrew Hayes of the current RLR sound. He added: ‘Our reference points were Attica Blues by Archie Shepp, Soul Zodiac by Rick Holmes and The Nat Adderley Sextet, and Enter by Fire! Orchestra.’
Linking the thick, grinding funk riffs of Axelrod with the cerebral radicalism of Shepp, Nature Will Take Care of You makes good on these reference points. Bringing both a brass section and a string quartet into the mix for five of the set’s nine tracks, the group had at their disposal a new sonic toolkit with which to illuminate the emotional and imaginative spaces nested deep within the music.
On ferocious, doom-heavy opener ‘Growing Pains’, strings and brass are employed to open up a glowing middle section that affords temporary respite from the crawling central riff, whilst on ‘Where Do You Go?’ they are used to provide an emotionally terse background as Hayes elaborates melody and theme, before bass and drums embark on a loose-limbed funk excursion. ‘Most tracks began as ideas that Matt and I had composed individually before we developed them in the rehearsal studio together,’ explains Hayes. ‘Our goal was to really open up the sound and invite input from other collaborators… We wanted to reflect our need for community through this process of presenting a larger collective of musicians.’
Central to this process was singer Annie Gardiner, a stalwart of Bristol’s vibrant music scene, and daughter of the late guitarist Ricky Gardiner, who collaborated with Iggy Pop and David Bowie among others. Gardiner’s ethereal vocals come into play on ‘Project Pigeon Missile’ and lead single ‘Great Fools’, which begins and ends on a simple tape-loop of Gardiner’s vocalisation, before Hayes enters with the sinuous motif that structures the piece. ‘The melody came first for ‘Great Fools’,’ Gardiner says. ‘I responded to Andrew's saxophone part with my voice paying homage to ‘O Superman’ by Laurie Anderson, a song I have always loved. The lyrics and vocal melody are abstract and very sound-based, but the song made me feel sad and
angry about how easily I forget about the planet in my everyday life.’
‘Most tracks began as ideas that Matt and I had composed individually before we developed them in the rehearsal studio together’ - Andrew Neil Hayes, Member of Run Logan Run.
‘Project Pigeon Missile’ responds to a short-lived World War Two military experiment
to use trained pigeons as guided weapons. ‘This was the first time that Andrew had
the idea of bringing in Annie Gardiner to sing,’ says Matt. ‘Safe to say the collaboration worked.’ The song itself is built around a see-sawing riff inspired by pianist Ahmad Jamal, before drawing to a conclusion in a surging, full-spectrum final passage. Gardiner also appears on the loping, long form ‘Silver Afternoon’, which builds uneasy string and brass tones over an angular bassline accented by Brown’s high-precision rhythms, with an arrangement that recalls the Middle Eastern jazz sounds of Rabih Abou-Khalil or the contemporary compositions of trumpeter Yazz Ahmed.
'We’ve all been through a period of great change individually and collectively - it has been traumatic' explains Hayes. ‘This album was at times deeply emotional, cathartic and healing to make. The title ‘Nature Will Take Care Of You’ works on both light and dark levels - the universe can heal us, or swallow us up, but in either case the natural order is restored.”
For the live shows the band will be joined by the wildly inventive Dan Messore (Indigo Kid) on guitar and rising star Beth O’Lenahan (Nulifer Yanya) on bass.
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