Bristolian power-improv duo Run Logan Run continues their link-up with Worm Discs and producer Riaan Vosloo, share ‘Where Do You Go?’, the new lead single from their forthcoming album Nature Will Take Care Of You out November 25  – a monumental slab of contemporary energy music that draws on the heavy soul of David Axelrod and the fiery commitment of Archie Shepp.

On new single ‘Where Do You Go?’ strings and brass provide an emotionally terse background as Andrew Neil Hayes elaborates the melody on sax, before double bass and drums embark on a loose-limbed funk excursion.

A deeper message lies within the single as Andrew Neil-Hayes explains:

We are living through a period of mental health crisis. All my friends, family, colleagues, have been affected by it in some way or another, either directly or indirectly. ‘Where Do You Go’ could be seen as a question of life after death, but it also asks where we go in times of mental desperation? It begins as a dirge (a lament for the dead) and ends joyous and hopeful.

Working with an expanded line-up that includes singer Annie Gardiner 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. But 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. 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.

Forthcoming album Nature Will Take Care Of You out November 25 via Worm Discs