Rat At Rat R (you figure out the anagram, sport) was one of the brighter lights of the NYC noise-groove scene back in '83. Originally hailing from Philadelphia, the quartet was formed in '81 by poet/guitarist Victor Poison-tˆte, and reassembled on the Lower East Side a year or so later. Their craven guitar-crack, female bass player (Glenn Branca's cousin, Sonda Andersson), and shouty-dunty approach to tunerism soon put them in the company of Live Skull, Swans and Sonic Youth. At the time, Rat At Rat R was probably the most trad-sounding of these combos, but the group imploded before garnering much positive notice outside its neighborhood. The records combine swinging, fucked-up guitar rock with neo-artsy mouth action.