The Eternals, Rawar Style (side A)

With Rawar Style, the Eternals found their creative voice.  The initial 12"s featured disparate stylized tracks, and the self-titled debut from 2000 took a step back, closer to Trenchmouth's punk rock.  With 2004's Rawar Style, Damon Locks and Wayne Montana pulled their influences together into a more coherent work.  Isaac Hayes-informed soul, Gang of Four post-punk, and bits of modern techno and dance music all manage to coexist in the same song.  Looped samples reference unknown musical styles, basslines provide a propulsive groove, and drums interweave with electronic rhythms.  Short, abstract tracks still coexist alongside structured and catchy songs, but the two styles borrow from a similar palette and flow logically together.  The sounds manage to somehow combine stark modernity with a cheaper lo-fi aesthetic, so that Rawar Style has a sonic character of its own.  While I wish the mastering job was a bit less scooped in the mids, it never sounds shrill or exaggerated.  Damon Locks''s collage on the front cover somehow looks both chaotic and simple at the same time—it's less referential than the music inside, but just as broad in its approach.