A second to the recommendation for Vinyl Junkies, the coolest store I found in London. The owner is a real character, a French guy named JP who has good musical taste. He also has the greatest number of Moods & Grooves releases I've seen in a single store :) He tends to stock deep into specific labels (M&G and Shaboom are the two I remember in particular) rather than broadly. And unlike many London stores where you have to get the staff to hand you records off the wall in order to preview them, everything at VJ is out in record bins.
I didn't like the Music & Video Exchange in Soho very much but the one in the Camden Town market area is good. Atlas was a very good store and was still open at New Year's when I was there, but it closed in February or so if memory serves. I also liked Flying Records in Soho, though it's basically 100% house and no techno. Lots of cool "West London" releases though. Generally I was fairly disappointed with the record stores in London, and I went to a *lot* of them the week I was there (at least 20, including non-dance music places like Stern's, which I've long admired for their African releases, but they have a sterile and uninviting retail operation across from the Kings Cross/St Pancras train station). As for clubs, I did see DJ Assault at Fabric, which is a decent commercial club but *huge* with a long queue even on a low-attendance night. Top quality sound system. Crowds: what you see in DJ or Mixmag. Fred --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
