Run Logan Run: The Delicate Balance Of Terror

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Dan Johnson (d, perc)
Andrew Neil Hayes (ts, fx)

Label:

Weizenbaum

June/2018

Catalogue Number:

WZB 003

RecordDate:

date not stated

There's a dystopian feel to this debut album from Bristol duo Run Logan Run, recorded live at new wave talent incubator Total Refreshment Centre in East London. The band have close links to Shabaka Hutchings’ electronica outfit The Comet Is Coming (Comet members Danalogue and Betamax produced this record), but their sound is very much their own – by turns haunting, visceral and free. Listening feels like being stuck in a post-apocalyptic open world game. Spectral sax melodies loom out of banks of electronic fog, trailing rattles and doom-laden hand drums. Thumping grooves come and go. There are sudden shifts from mesmeric to aggressive. ‘Post-Human’ becomes a rock-out in an FX lightning storm. And there are always drones wavering in the air – mimicking the hum of machinery or the dying reverberations of church bells. Johnson favours stark drum sounds and barrages of clattering sticks. On ‘Death Is Elsewhere’ Hayes channels Shabaka Hutchings, firing jocular riffs and lairy, false-fingered hollers. But he has a lot in common with Colin Stetson (a Canadian master of extended technique) too, and he spills his guts on the title-track, splintering notes and blurring arpeggios. ‘Cleansing’ brings the album full circle, abandoning the listener in an eerie sonic wasteland.

Follow us

Jazzwise Print

  • Latest print issues

From £5.83 / month

Subscribe

Jazzwise Digital Club

  • Latest digital issues
  • Digital archive since 1997
  • Download tracks from bonus compilation albums during the year
  • Reviews Database access

From £7.42 / month

Subscribe

Subscribe from only £5.83

Never miss an issue of the UK's biggest selling jazz magazine.

Subscribe

View the Current
Issue

Take a peek inside the latest issue of Jazzwise magazine.

Find out more