Posted online today, the Syd Barrett YouTube channel has unveiled yet another brilliant animated video—this one covering the Syd song “Rats.” “Rats” appears on Syd’s second solo album, Barrett, released in November 1970. Written and performed by Barrett, the track captures the unfiltered, spontaneous energy that defined his post–Pink Floyd output. The song stands as one of the most unrestrained and enigmatic pieces in Barrett’s solo catalogue.

Musically, “Rats” is more a frenzied jam than a conventional song. Its loose structure, raw guitar tone, and unsteady rhythm convey an almost chaotic energy. Barrett’s vocal delivery is manic and forceful, shouting surreal lines over the top of the instrumental swirl. The lyrics tumble out in a kind of cut-up poetry, closer in spirit to Spike Hawkins’s spontaneous poetry broth—free-flowing, fragmentary wordplay that bubbles with humour, confusion, and invention. The track’s production lacks polish, but that roughness is integral to its character; it feels spontaneous, impulsive, and on the verge of unraveling. Critics have compared its energy to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, with a similarly jagged sense of rhythm and verbal abstraction.

For the animated content, Artist on the Border explains:

“I decided to pair up with artist Bailey Violette. Bailey has been painting Syd in various fantastic environments—not excluding many depictions of Syd as the god Pan. A perfect analogy. The original Piper now playing his pipe to the rats. She and I got acquainted when she made one of the first fan-art works based on an Artist on the Border project.

The video consists of at least 26 individually animated original works by Bailey, supplemented by scribbles and blotter art by me and the family on the border. Though not actually photographed as stop-motion, the rats that keep popping up throughout were hand-cut from cardboard and animated in segments. This video was made using… dare I say it, Artistic Intelligence!”