The Eternals, Black Museum (12" EP)

2 years after the Eternals' debut LP emphasized their pop song side, the Black Museum 12" (2002) focused primarily on a series of fractured instrumentals. The one exception is the first track—"Black Museum" is a slow, beautiful song with an aggressive breakdown in the middle. Most of the instrumentals are built around what sound like loops of hand drums, but their origins are unclear. They're less recognizably modern/techo in style than the instrumentals on the early 12"s, and they provide a foundation for a lot of the group's later work. Black Museum sounds clear and modern but never sterile or brittle, and it features the Eternals' usual cut-up imagery on the cover.