The province's fire marshal offers the following suggestion for families contemplating a good old-fashioned backyard fireworks display over this Victoria Day weekend: DON'T.

The biggest similarity between the more synthetic, beat-driven music that has made since regrouping back at the turn of the current century and the pioneering London band's output from the original punk era is that, new or old, it sounds great. The quartet's first three albums — Pink Flag (1977), Chairs Missing (1978) and 154 (1979) — have been freshly remastered and reissued in attractively designed digipacks on the band's own label, Pink Flag. After meeting at art school in 1976, singer/guitarist Colin Newman, guitarist B.C. Gilbert, bassist G. Lewis and drummer Robert Gotobed pursued an appetite for minimalist but angular punk, firing off 21 tracks in less than 35 minutes on their astonishing debut, Pink Flag. The nearly four-minute title track, with its fuzzy fade-out, signalled an even greater appetite for experimentation that was pursued on the follow-up, Chairs Missing, featuring the jangle-pop near-hit "Outdoor Miner." By the time you get around to the assured New Wave synth-pop of "Map Ref. 41º N 93º W" on 154, resemblance to the tunes written two short years before is scant — except that they are almost equally terrific.

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