Run Logan Run’s third full length album For A Brief Moment We Could Smell The Flowers finds the acclaimed Bristolian duo pushing their music forwards in a dramatic new direction in the company of producer Riaan Vosloo (Nostalgia 77). Recorded in lockdown after months of intense jamming, the album bolsters the dynamic improvised sound of the group with expansive synth soundscapes that add depth, warmth and emotional heft to the duo’s uniquely committed style of spiritualised jazz.
‘Making music is almost the only thing that makes sense to us’ says Andrew Neil Hayes, Run Logan Run’s saxophone powerhouse. ‘It’s a transcendent experience, where time stands still and it feels like our place in the universe is just right.’ It’s a succinct summary of the deeply held commitment found at the root of Run Logan Run’s uncompromising music. Based in the alchemical fusion of Hayes’ extended, pedal-treated saxophone improvisations and Matt Brown’s surging, polyrhythmic alt- breakbeats, the Bristol group have picked up the baton passed by the new generation of jazz-continuum UK players, and journeyed with it toward new vistas of inner and outer space.
Brown, formerly of Bristol unit Dakhla Brass, replaces Dan Johnson, who featured on Run Logan Run’s acclaimed 2018 debut The Delicate Balance of Terror. Over months of improvised sessions during the lockdown, Brown and Hayes established the near telepathic synergy achieved when musicians know just how to lock into each other. The songs on For A Brief Moment… emerged from these focussed practice sessions: ‘We’re lucky enough to have our own rehearsal studio in a community space called Kuumba, in St Pauls, Bristol,’ explains Hayes. ‘We wrote the whole album in the space of three months. The first two months were spent improvising for hours at a time. Occasionally one of us would bring something along that we’d written in our own time as a starting point, but predominantly we’d start from scratch together until we stumbled on a riff or an idea we liked. Then we’d keep pushing and pulling it around until it developed into a track. In this way, the musical conversation that takes place between a duo is very intimate.’