A spare half hour or so hanging around in Notting Hill.

Hey! I know what. The old Music and Video Exchange is still open around these parts. You can’t beat a bit of Sunday lunchtime crate digging.

Music and Video Exchanges are quite a thing.

Back in the day the Fulham Broadway branch was my legit fence to offload all the endless promo crap that was sent my way. That kept me in BOOZE money for the week ahead.

I’m amazed that the Notting Hill shop is still open. It’s quite a treasure trove as well.

Vinyl, CD’s and yep, cassettes are all on sale. I struggled to see any videos. It’s best not to mess with a brand.

The place was buzzing around lunchtime - and not just with old muso farts like me.

It was encouraging to see the young folk of West London flocking through the vinyl and spending.

My budget didn’t quite reach to vinyl today. I did walk out with The The’s Time Bomb and the debut solo from the silly old racist Mozza - but he wasn’t a sill old racist back then, so, erm, that makes it alright then.

Suedehead remains a beautiful piece of work, sitting well immediately after the post- Smiths period. It’s also got the His Master’s Voice label imprint.

Time Bomb is of a similar theme. Beat(en) Generation is perhaps the last great rally cry against Thatcherism in the later 1980’s.

I had to leave the flat on Saturday afternoon. Have For Sale sign, have prospective buyers wanting to poke around.

It’s best to give them some privacy. But please do take your shoes off.

Oh…

I laced up my rain cherry red DM’s, and went off stomping towards Wankerville.

I made it a circular route, cutting through lovely Larkhall Park, a brief stretch along Wandsworth Road, and then up towards Wankerville Old Town.

My face doesn’t fit around here. I was clean cut and freshly shaven. But even my boy-ish good looks struggle a little with the Clap’ham 20-somethings.

I took cover in the charity shop stretch.

Clap’ham once had a half decent run of bog standard charity shops. The past few years has seen them morph into ‘vintage retro shops.’

This is Wankerville talk for add another £20 on to the price tag.

Trinity Hospice in the Old Town remains affordable. It has the second best CD collection in South London, only rivalled by Oxfam in Herne Hill.

I don’t usually waste my time digging through the charity shop CD crap: Cliff, Simply Red and Boyzone is your usual offering.

But an upside of having an upmarket neighbourhood like Clap’ham and Herne Hill is that the Bright Young Things do have good tastes in the CD’s they want to dispose of.

I spent five minutes flicking through. I ended up with a couple of Neil Young albums, and Beth Orton’s Comfort of Strangers.

Yours, for three quid all in, Guv.

Job’s a good ‘un.

Sleaford Mods have dropped a ‘dark version’ of their video for The Good Life.

It is Halloween, after all.

Christ, this was bloody awful. The oh so enthusiastic handclaps ten seconds in should have served as a warning sign. This isn’t really a live album, is it?

I could have tolerated the post-production feel if the songs stood up. But they were shit. I bailed on track five - quite an achievement.

⭐

Blimey - Adrian Sherwood has been busy once again with another new release: The Collapse of Everything.

He’s one of those artists that I never know where to really start. The back catalogue is so vast and diverse. Sometimes it’s just best to dive in at random.

The Collapse of Everything is a little more structured. Tango Dub would be a clumsy, yet accurate, description.

Yer man certainly knows how to build up and sequence a track. It reminded me very much of the ACE Ozrics in places.

It sounds like a full on orchestra has been hired at Abbey Road as part of the production. Betcha it was more like a home bedroom DIY effort.

I’d love to see a film that has The Collapse of Everything as the soundtrack.

Maybe just turn on the news and mute the telly?

Another changing of the seasons, another selection of new music from Cleaners from Venus.

Hurrah!

Mr Mule has dropped on Bandcamp the Neverland for Now EP - four tracks, all with a a DIY ethos as you would expect.

Start your own revolution and cut out the middle man, etc.

Mule has been particularly prolific in recent years. Did someone say LEGACY? As long as he’s coming up with the goods, I don’t really mind.

The lead track from the EP is a dreamy affair, complete with Mule’s signature backwards vocals bolted on at the end. The unmistakable jingle jangle chords carry the song.

There’s a breezy summer feel - unlike the Lilli Bolero summer album, that sounded more like autumn.

Mule World is always a little mixed up.

Elsewhere across the release and there are local references ahoy. Track 4 is even called Return to Wivenhoe, a subject we all find hard to address.

“When the tide is high, and the mist is low, I will return to Wivenhoe.”

Expect a Christmas drop soon.

For once a foreign language album I can appreciate. The tightness of the beats and the production elevate above the lyrics. I bailed at the end of the album, rather than continue with all the mixes. The strength of the originals was enough to satisfy me. A decent working soundtrack.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

I streamed Bark Psychosis' Hex album this afternoon. There was a cheapo copy going on ebay for £6. Anything between £15-£20 is the usual asking price.

The idea was to give it a play through to see if it was as outstanding as I once remembered. It was, and it wasn’t.

It’s an exceptional piece of music of which the term post-rock - whatever that might mean - was made for. What makes it all the more remarkable is that this was very much an unknown musical direction back in 1994.

The disappointment wasn’t in the music, but in me. I must have rinsed this on a home recording cassette for six months or so around 1994. Yet I didn’t recognise one single piece of music throughout the playback this afternoon.

I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

Hex has clearly left a memory on me as being something of interest. I wouldn’t have set up an ebay search otherwise.

But it fails to pass the Old Grey Whistle Test. You won’t get too many window cleaners whistling along to some of the dark passages that unfold as the album stretches out in front of you.

Three tracks in and I had decided that this was worth £6. It’s probably worth £10 tbh.

And then BLOODY HELL. I clicked through on ebay, only to find that the CD had been sold.

Buy now, ask later, etc.

I wasn’t really in the mood for this, first thing. But I persisted and gave it a spin. It’s all very familiar. The beats build up, the bass kicks in, you go apeshit crazy.

It’s not exactly a home listening album. You need to be mashed off your head and stumbling into a ditch to really appreciate. Sadly those days are long behind me.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

I struggled to get my head around this. It’s more rock than punk, even taking a few unwelcome steps towards goth.

What a racket from a bunch of young Herberts. It’s a sludge of an album that sounds as though it’s stuck in time.

I’ve never got on with Gary Gilmore’s Eye. Sixth form humour at best.

⭐ ⭐