Solved
Via reddit...
I googled it for you, and I found an old guitar magazine article that says this:
'Its eerie intro consists of Denis’ guitar processed into cut-up staccato blips by a Yamaha SPX90 with its noise gate engaged. “I just went crazy scratching the chords very fast,” he explains. “I was trying to simulate what the keyboard did on Pink Floyd’s album.”'
http://voivod.net/1992/03/15/1992-03-guitar-player-magazine-interview/
Could be a crazy sort of delay effect with a lot of the settings cranked, or a sampler?
happyandhappy thinks it's tremolo pedal. I've never used one so I'm about to google.
Tremolo would have a volume drop I think?
I watched 4 tremolo pedal demos. They weren't like the song and they weren't very good. My hunch right now is the guitarist used a tremolo pedal with a knob or two at a very low or very high setting to get a kill switch-like vibe.
Everything is so directed towards products and marketing. Youtube and google serve me up vids for products. I don't want that. Give me an uploader who has experimented a lot with that pedal and they are screwing around. That's what I want. They don't even have to play well. I want sonic explorations not "This pedal does a great job of capturing the classic 1950s Fend—" Shut up!
You were right. I edited the self text.
Try looking up the the Dwarfcraft Grazer
I watched a demo vid. That's a funky box. In fact - I think Bill Frisell uses that in the last ~4m of this - Bill Frisell ~ La La Means I Love You. It's such a fantastic cover.