Watch: Frantic Paperrad and Extreme Animals music videos from the early ’00s

Extreme Animals is a long-running project by artist Jacob Ciocci. A crucial member of the ’00s Providence, RI music and art scene that helped birth Lightning Bolt, he became Extreme Animals while simultaneously working with the Paperrad art collective. As Paperrad, Ciocci, his sister Jessica Ciocci and artist (and animation bigwig) Ben Jones were known for wild multimedia events and frantically vivid neon video pieces.

Here, for example, is Jacob Ciocci’s track and clip “the peace tape.”

Digging through video archives, videotapes and early computer animation, he and the collective employed synthetic sonic messes to convey their messages.

Each is its own visual and aural feast, and reward repeated viewings. Musically, Ciocci, who’s now in Chicago, mashes up rap, early video music, happy house, gabba and metal to build unpredictably labyrinthine experiences.

The brilliant “Cher and Troll” video below may be short, but in that brevity resides an entire dissertation on the WTF-world of 1980s pop culture.

Paperrad’s epic P-Unit tape is an hour-long trip, cut into three parts on YouTube. The group’s crowning achievement, it’s a strobe-heavy jumble of weirdness.