ALTAR EAGLE - NIGHTRUNNERS (LP - USED m-/m-)

"While husband and wife duo Brad Rose and Eden Hemming might be best known for more 'challenging' sounds, they managed to rack up accolades for their first foray into pop with the 'Mechanical Gardens' album released by the Type label back in 2010. 'Nightrunners' is Altar Eagle's second full-length together and pushes the duo's woozy pop sound into a flickering neon haze. The soft-focus beauty of Eden's voice is now placed center stage, and the industrial pop productions are as dreamy as they've ever been. Whether through the whimsical dub-influenced opener "Carousel Ocean" or cold-wave shakes of album highlight "Runaways," the duo have an authenticity it's impossible to place, and a singular quality to their music. As they saunter from electrified shoegaze notes to darker sounds, each track seems intrinsically linked to the next, imbuing 'Nightrunners' with a narrative that brings to mind classic 4AD - from the jagged pop of This Mortal Coil to the outsider dub-pop of Colourbox. These are songs dragged kicking and screaming through a thicket of microchips and frozen pizza." (label info) limited to 500 copies