This early recording captures the very second show we played as a group – during our tenure as "Bobcat, Wow!" – soon after we formed in 2008. This is our set from a battle of the bands competition held in the Lund Auditorium at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, where Tom was studying journalism at the time. We competed for the $750 prize against five or six other groups, among whom were the only group without a vocalist, interestingly. We must have impressed the judges sufficiently as we took home the prize and bought a new drum kit almost immediately.

Included here are two tracks – "VoltagePowerSound" and "Motorik" – that didn't find their way into our sets after this point and were never released. Also included are the original versions of "Apache Beat" and "Action Kids," as well as the only live recorded of "Le Dernier Combat, Gunner," which closes the set. Our music at this point was like beginner's jazz-fusion run through a punk garage band filter: the result is pure, raw energy. It had plenty of momentum, but was quite erratic, sputtering back and forth between noisy chaos, spacey electronic interludes and punk intensity.

We were set up for loudness: Jeff played through a Fender half-stack while Graham played through a 400-watt SWR full-stack. This was also another one of our earlier shows where Graham augmented his setup with a computer running pre-recorded loops, a MIDI controller and other electronic gadgets.

Brett Wassink filmed the performance, sound checks and other backstage activities for inclusion in a forthcoming documentary.