Wud Records: Welcome to 2017!

Warmest greetings to you dear reader, and a joyous welcome to 2017 from all the team at Wud Records! If you are lucky enough to still be alive, and if you are reading this there’s a good chance you are, award yourself 5000 XP and a power-up for your musical instrument, microphone or drum of choice.

As well as losing Pete from Dark Company after a very long illness, we lost so many cultural icons in 2016. Just look at this picture by Chris Barker (@christhebarker) and be amazed.

So this year, how about Rupert Murdoch, Simon Cowell, Robert Mugabwe, Nigel Farage, Bashar al-Assad, Nick Griffin, Donald Trump, Tony Blair, Kim Jong-un, Gordon Ramsey, Wladimir Putin and all the people responsible for creating the Jeremy Kyle show? Come on 2017, you can do it! Yin and yang, you know how these things ought to work…

Every year since we first launched the website, the number of friends, fans, listeners, readers, radio plays and global influence we have has grown and grown. Last year was the biggest and best yet and we’d like to thank everybody who helped make it so. You know who you are! :) During 2016 we released a few tracks for Pok the Bard‘s forthcoming Anthology album, repaired a load more broken playlists at our website and unearthed a few gems that we added to the Archives section of Wud Records. Behind the scenes and in our studios, a lot more was done as well.

So what about 2017? Well, there are a number of very exciting things to come in the next few weeks and months. Let your dreams feast on these thoughts!

Recently The Bastard Sons of Dennis reconvened after a long break, due to the effects of work and life and other such inconveniences. They are sounding absolutely terrific once again and still have all the sparkle and fun that they used to have. We are anticipating recordings, videos and live performances from the dynamic duo to recommence very soon.

Fans of Pok may or may not know about the reforming Space Goats. Yes, it’s true! You heard it here and it’s happening! Space Goats have always been one of our favourite bands on this planet with their unique sound and wonderful live shows, full of storytelling, dramatics and great songs from the past and the future. We will keep you updated with further developments on this front.

During 2016 we did a massive amount of work to Pok‘s Anthology album and more tracks will be released this year. We are hoping a session visit from former Alchemeon and Invisible Opera Company of Tibet keyboard virtuoso Jim Peters will round off a few tracks. There is just the slight possibility that we may even complete the album this year depending on how other things go, although we are not setting a definite deadline. Once the album is finished we are planning a vinyl release, as well as CD and digital downloads. Look out for more new releases in our News service.

Flicker have made some progress with their forthcoming HappySad album, finally. We hope to be able to release some more tracks for this and perhaps even complete it this year or early next, depending on when equipment is repaired. We believe there will be a couple of tracks coming fairly soon for this album.

Dark Company suffered the terrible loss of Pete last year. Whilst there will be no more new songs, we intend to move some of their back catalogue further forward and are hopeful of some releases later in the year. George, Maxx, Zak, Sven and Josh will all be coming for a visit and a cup of tea and a biscuit to look at the immediate future. The band and ourselves have unearthed a possible vocalist to record the parts Pete was not quite able to nail during our many sessions. Watch this space for any further developments.

We have been grappling with some video editing software and believe there will be some new films heading your way from our studios. We hope to record some performances of The Bastard Sons of Dennis and attempt some live streaming with them as well. Flicker and Dark Company studio sessions will be filmed and uploaded to our YouTube channel, as will some of our sessions with Pok.

Our Archives are nearly complete as far as we can tell. However, we are hoping that some of our friends and contacts will be able to supply some of the material that we don’t have and believe there may be some new additions to this part of our website soon. We’ve been in touch with a couple of them and things are looking promising at this stage.

In addition to all of these things we shall be further investigating our cassette vault and uploading the digitised results if they are worth hearing. We intend to work on some of the ‘coming soon’ items on our homepage so they can be removed and replaced, including the repair of the Alchemeon playlists and the mastering of a ‘Best Of Alchemeon‘ compilation.

On social media we hope to expand our presence even more. We shall continue to champion the cause of all musical underdogs we find interesting in the face of corporate mainstream brainwashing and censorship. Together we are invincible!

Don’t forget – you can listen to an ever-growing collection of songs from Wud Records artists on SoundCloud by clicking here – and you can follow Wud Records on Twitter right here – and you can support us by downloading some music from our shop at Bandcamp by clicking here.

Happy New Year! :)

Sam, George, Kim, Dan, Tessa, Pok, Andy, Sven, Maxx, Zak and Josh.