Another rare warehouse find from the depths of the SFTRI vaults, 1993's 8 Ball Corner Pocket is one of two EPs that the esteemed punk/garage label released in the early 90s from these previous power electronics pioneers-cum-psychedelic skullstompers. Don't ask me what is going on with that front cover. It's an atrocity of some kind, I’m sure, and I wouldn't want to be in those penguins' shoes. It always leaves many more questions than answers, even thirty years later.

OK, down to the tunes: two tracks, the A-side "8 Ball Corner Pocket" comes in hot like German firebombers, furious tribal-like drumming at full power pummeling you while droning acoustic guitar, distant yelling, and excoriating blasts of distorted guitar noise surge and recede, dropping an offbeat, fairly pissed-sounding shockslab of violent neo-psychedelia / acid-damaged noise rock; it's right in step with the sort of freeform quasi-sludge rock drugginess that Ram;eh was neck-deep in during the first half of the 90s. It's a banger, and grows more fucked and overmodulated and electronically warped as it lumbers into brain-scraping oblivion, never-ending, fading into the eternal.

The other one is "Trapped Aircraft", a jangly, maudlin lo-fi outsider pop trip at first before erupting in their inimitable style into deafening blasts of roof-shaking percussive chaos and quasi-blastbeat mayhem, blurts of naive melody swirling beneath a musical carcass of wah-pedal overdrive, filthy power chords, and effects lifting the whole maggot-boiling body into the heavens. A perfect example of how these guys could toe that line between striking improvisational beauty and total world-eating Armageddon; imagine Beat Happening being beaten mercilessly by a roving band of Hanatarash members. Sound good? It does to me.

The EP is noteworthy for featuring guest spots from eventual members Anthony Di Franco (Novatron ) and Stuart Dennison, who had previously been busy with their ear-splittling work in Skullflower.

Lovely 90’s-era pop-art kitsch sleeve-art from Pablo (The Frozen One).