Andrew Neil Hayes of Run Logan Run is a man who has taken the saxophone into new realms. As with the opening track of EP An Ear In Place Of A Mouth he can weave together mystery and mesmerism from the saxophone’s rawest components – breath across a reed, manipulated by the keys, and pushed out of the bell – then send it through a bank of effects to expand its sonic world exponentially. I was truly dazzled when seeing Run Logan Run’s first incarnation of Hayes as Prospero to drummer Dan Johnson’s Caliban. It was hard to believe the saxophone could withstand so many effects and be morphed into whole galaxies of sounds fired with such force they are probably overtaking Voyager I and II as I type.
An Ear In Place OF A Mouth completes a trilogy of releases that started with 2025’s Prey For Peace, which was born out of Hayes having fun with friends and creating a set of tracks that vibrated with beauty, poetry, and a yin and yang mix of the electronic and the organic. EP 2, LV: HRD was more electronic-soul and felt like it harked back to Rotary Connection’s ‘I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun’ so brilliantly remixed by 4 Hero for the Nuyorican Soul project in 2010.
Andrew Neil Hayes has been pulling apart and putting Run Logan Run back together since Dan Johnson left and he flexed the line-up to add more members, reaching a peak in 2023 when I saw a spectacular show in front of a hometown crowd at Strange Brew in Bristol. The band onstage included guitarist Dan Messore melting some frets and the sublime bass playing of Beth O’Lenahan. The three EPs have seen Hayes make full use of his Ankh Sanctuary, the studio he built himself that also houses his independent label.
BB James, who sang on the warped and disturbing ‘Skew You’ and ‘Shit Poems’ on the second EP LV: HRD – which has the prowling energy of Prince’s The Black Album – returns on ‘You Don’t Believe (I Couldn’t Be)’ which allow the beauty of her voice to truly shine, flying high over a bouncing synth backbeat. Equally Gina Leonard (of Mumbletide) provides vocals on ‘To A God (Compassion)’ and brings a gentle urgency in her slightly staccato delivery.
Through these EPs and a recently created Substack page, Hayes has been in a reflective mood, seemingly trying to make sense of the world. His writing is part philosophy and part stream of consciousness, and runs parallel to what I have often thought about his playing: that he is willing his saxophone to answer questions from his subconscious. Watching him play live you see his intensity as he leans into his playing as if willing his chakras to line up and trigger Kundalini. He says, “I’m trying to make time and space to listen more — to listen to the trees blowing in the wind, the sound of raindrops on the pavement, birds singing at the wrong time of day because they got confused by the streetlamps”
Run Logan Run, in whatever iteration, seek the purity of music through sonic exploration, the joy of creative collaboration and the fun in being musically fearless. They are a band that AI could never recreate and that is something I celebrate with every single one of their releases.
“This act of music-making isn’t a novelty to be reduced to ones and twos and used for fodder by the techno-oligarchy. It’s a non-negotiable spiritual necessity. We need to listen. Honestly, fuck Meta, fuck Alphabet Inc, fuck Apple, fuck Spotify, I could go on, fuck all those leeches. We need to maintain an open mind and remind ourselves this isn’t the way, just a way. We need to keep trying to imagine new possibilities for the future.“
All three EPs are also available as a vinyl boxed set.
Run Logan Run: Facebook |Instagram | YouTube | Bandcamp | Website
Review by Paul F Cook
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List