In 1994, two years before their first album, then-teenage Northwest rockers Modest Mouse recorded the bulk of these dry, abrasive little tunes, mostly unreleased until now. Some parts of their aesthetic emerged fully formed—frontman Issac Brock’s high-strung nasal whine, stop-and-start melodies and tentative relationship with pitch—and some parts took a while to develop, such as their lyrical fascination with travel and distance. Instead of the rumbling epics of their later records, which combine punky tantrums and Pink Floyd–style spaciness, we get patient but ultraconcise miniatures, the longest two barely breaking the three-minute mark. Even shorter are the nine “dial-a-songs” that close things out—violent, splintery ideas sketched out on Brock’s four-track, distorted like images in an ugly dream.