Utzp

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Week from Monday 27th April 2026 - ...in the end, the only way I was able to save a copy of THIS MONTH's bank statement was to do a screenshot of the account page. To recap, since the new "improvements" to the bank's website, previous months statements are there as PDFs, but not the latest one, even several days after I got the notification that it was! Sorry to bang on about this, but ill-advised "improvements" to bigbiz websites are a particular bugbear of mine, along with most forms of advertising...

FIREFOX has now released as version 150. A lot of the 'fixes' apply just to WINDOZE and MAC, and I'm not that fussy about any improvements they might incorporate for the management of multiple TABS - 'cos I don't roll that way! - but I did notice a couple of the new features in my own LINUX and ANDROID versions. The built-in PDF EDITOR has all that you could possibly want from a PDF editor now, and they've upgraded the built-in LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR, so that it would probably give G***LE's a run for its money, while still keeping things PRIVATE!

This Friday, I've got my COVID JABBING, so that'll be me ZONKED OUT for the weekend...


Like seemingly everyone else, I've warmed to the "mantra-rock dada pythagoro-cubiste" stylings of the Quebec oddballs ANGINE DE POITRINE. But I don't subscribe to the prevailing opinion that they are the FRESHEST thing to happen to rock music in donkeys' years, or that they are somehow the SOUND OF THE FUTURE. I've kinda heard it all before! Just cos Mr & Mrs Joe Public have never heard anything like it, that doesn't make it groundbreaking.

I can trace their 'unique' sound back to any number of similarly quirky beat combos of the last fifty-plus years (Ruins; Fred Frith's various projects in the '80s; Adrian Belew's 'sample & hold' layered looping; Magma and Gong; all the usual 'P-WORD' culprits; certain 'post-rock' bands from Chicago... etc etc).

I'm not sure that they would have even got noticed at all by a wider audience, if it wasn't for their nutty VISUALS (which also bring to mind earlier models).

I am rather enjoying their fun brand of MICROTONAL MATH-ROCK currently, but it is what it is, a bit of a NOVELTY. After a few 'deep' listens, I've concluded that their first album was better than the recently released "Volume Two". Indeed, their first single "Sherpa" is STILL the best thing they've ever done (from early 2024, when I guess they first drew attention to themselves?). It's also worth mentioning that you can comfortably fit BOTH albums onto one CD, with room to spare!

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