Wud Records: September 2026 top ten published at SoundCloud

The September 2026 Chart

The top ten tracks for September 2026 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

We shall elaborate further below with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno.

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives a lot less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €9 album is worth about 4500 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp. You can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

Just as we were enjoying the best month we ever had on SoundCloud last summer, our account was unexpectedly deleted by mistake. The account was subsequently restored, but was still badly damaged. It took until mid-October for it to be properly repaired.

In the meantime, there was not a single word from SoundCloud themselves regarding what they were doing to repair our account. This was the catalyst for a number of the changes that are happening. Our trust in SoundCloud as a place to keep our music was shattered.

Neither do we fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud and its slowly improving Insights system. However, there has been enough improvement in data quality in recent months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

We removed all of our music from the mean green snot machine a few months ago. We highly recommend you do the same, if you have any there. We also highly recommend that you cancel your subscription, and move your playlists (and so on) to a more ethical streaming service. Every other streaming platform is more ethical than snotify.

We don’t say this lightly. Nor do we say so from a position of ignorance. There are many very good reasons to remove all your music from spotify and to cancel your sub. Do it now!

For more information, please refer to this article:
https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/boycott-spotify/

Tidal, Coda, YouTube, Amazon, Deezer, Apple Music, iTunes, etc.

We use data from our distributors Globex, Soundrop and CD Baby for information regarding streams on platforms such as Coda, Tidal, YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts.

Data from the streaming services filters through to us via our distributors, and we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what has been going on across all of the streaming services this way. Because the data arrives several days, or even weeks, late, we only use it to extrapolate general trends. Although, to be fair, it was reasonably good so far in 2026.

HearThis, Audius, Audiomack

We have started organising our music at HearThis since the recent debacle with SoundCloud. Their stats have improved a lot recently and are now somewhat easier to collate.

September 2026 was also a very good month for us at HearThis, although we only have a few artists with music uploaded. Our recent successes there are making adding more music to HearThis higher priority among all the things we need to do. More on this soon.

The aforementioned debacle with SoundCloud was the catalyst for ourselves taking the decision to also begin adding our music to both Audius and Audiomack. Both platforms came highly recommended, although their stats, are also not especially informative. Activity on both platforms has been low and we may yet abandon them, although we have had very little time to dedicate to them.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during September 2026 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. Just one download of an album was worth a couple of months of snotify streams before we left that platform entirely. By buying a download, you genuinely help us keep the fires burning, and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on X (formerly Twitter) and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

How Did We Calculate The September 2026 Chart?

The algorithm we use gives greater weight to downloads, then comments and reposts and likes (active engagement), then plays (passive engagement). Different platforms perform differently and are given different weightings based on standard deviation calculations.

We use general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. The data has been amalgamated together from all of the different platforms to make the new Top Ten. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored, as is anything from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

Only you, the listener, can influence our next chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Who’s In The September 2026 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features three different acts.

There are five songs from Dark Company, three from The Bastard Sons of Dennis, and two from the Band of Georges.

This month we have one new entry, six re-entries, one climber, no non-movers, and two fallers.

Dark Company

Congratulations to Dark Company for topping our charts again! The only month they didn’t manage to do so was last month, when the Band of Georges finally achieved top spot. Dark Company have dominated the newest chart, owning five out of the ten songs.

A brand new entry at number one is the band’s newest release. It is track two from the first CD of their forthcoming triple album, A for Acronym. The song is called Beneath the Skin, and it is an awesome stomping earworm of a classic rock number. It may become the first single release from the album, sometime in the future.

When Beneath the Skin was recorded, the ideas came so thick and fast that the instruments were not tuned as well as they could have been. It seemed more important to get a snapshot of the ideas as they were arriving, rather than check for perfect tuning, which was very unusual for Dark Company. Nearly every part is the first take.

All of the guitar was played on Nicodemus. There are two rhythm guitar parts, the one panned to the right played with fingers, and the one to the left with a pick. They play opposite rhythms to each other in the chorus, which creates a massive sound against Maxx’s thuddy minimalist bass.

Returning to the top ten after being absent since July 2022 is Dark Company‘s most well-known song. Medicines returns to our charts yet again as a re-entry, this time at number three.

Medicines has been our biggest selling song over the years, and people still seek it out and enjoy listening to it. Medicines has also spent more time on our charts than any other song ever released by Wud Records.

Medicines was popular in Europe rather than in the uk where Dark Company formed. Mainstream radio in the uk didn’t want to play it as the intro was “too long” and the lyrics “too difficult to understand”. They are about a subject other than procreation, the only subject a dumbed down mainstream audience seems capable of understanding, according to the purveyors of mainstream media themselves.

Back on the new chart at number four is Ship to Shore by Dark Company. This is a wonderful progressive rock song with a lot of history. The work-in-progress version on the Alien Heat album was transformed into a hybrid electronic rock song by Jeff and George in the early days of Dark Company‘s second incarnation, when the band became a digital trio.

Originally an Alien Heat song, Ship to Shore has been a big favourite for many years. It begins with a sound that was sampled from the Alien Heat band’s version. Zaphod created this special sound himself on the Yamaha DX7 and the song would usually begin with a cry of “Cue The Noise!”.

A re-entry at number eight is Spoiler, from the fabulous Rage in Heaven album by Dark Company. In this instance, Spoiler refers to looking at the end of the story before reaching it, rather than something to aid the aerodynamics of a car.

It has the most wicked funk bass you will ever hear from the master Jeff “The Bass (Lost In Space)” Willmot, as well as some improbable and unplayable guitar shredding from George in the solo. Pete’s lyrics are esoteric, allegorical, and relatable. The beats from this were used by Jeff as the basis for a number of his dance tracks, and the file in the Atari Cubase was called BEATS4IT.ALL, which seemed appropriate.

Spoiler has been very popular across all the platforms where it can be found. It has recently enjoyed a resurgence from being discovered by person-to-person sharing websites, and streamed from Apple Music.

Down one place from number eight to number nine is The Borrowers. This is the third song from the first CD of Dark Company‘s forthcoming triple-CD album, A for Acronym. It is a kind of dystopian psychedelic rock song, still work in progress, that was released in the middle of July.

A lot of The Borrowers is absolutely first take, with a few additions from Sven on drums and Josh on keys. The strings and vocal were recorded as The Borrowers was being created, and as such, are not especially polished.

Pete sang the vocals three times, all the way through. Instead of editing the vocals down to just the best bits, the three verses repeated three times seemed to work rather well. There is an overdubbed backing vocal that came to George when he used to dance his baby daughter to sleep, which was always guaranteed to send her off.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

It’s been a splendid month for The Bastard Sons of Dennis, who have decorated the new chart with three outstanding entries. This is largely due to the increased number of streams on YouTube Music and Apple Music, among other places.

All three songs by The Bastard Sons of Dennis are from their Cosy Lube Turtle album. This is a collection of covers of deep cuts by Blue Öyster Cult, lovingly recreated by Derek Broom and Chuck Palmer.

Climbing three places from number five to number two is the Cosy Lube Turtle version of Then Came the Last Days of May. Then Came the Last Days of May is a truly beautiful and rather tragic song. The version by our dynamic duo adds a twist to the versions heard on Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous studio album and the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees album from 1975.

Derek would sing “Now and then a duck” instead of “truck”, which caused fans of the duo to bring toy ducks with them along to live performances. Chuck’s solo is largely based on the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees version, and his little whistle at the end (which didn’t always come out quite right in a live show) came from the character Tom Good in the uk tv sitcom The Good Life.

A re-entry at number five is Seven Screaming Diz-Busters. This a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. It is a song for which they were well known.

Originally this song was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performances by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

A re-entry at number ten this month from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is The Subhuman. This is another wonderful Blue Öyster Cult song. It was originally released on the 1974 Secret Treaties album and there is a sublime live version on On Your Feet Or On Your Knees. The Bastard Sons of Dennis drew inpiration from both versions.

The Subhuman is seven minutes long and filled with beautifully crafted definitive guitar melodies. Live performances would be very similar, despite the length and the apparent jamminess of the piece. This is another song where Chuck tunes his low string to a drop-D.

Band of Georges

The Band of Georges had two songs that hit the chart in September 2026, one from each side of the cassette that was Volume V.

For the first quarter of last year, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges had during 2025. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of last year.

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. Because now, we have been allowed to release all of the volumes of his early songs in their demo form.

We have done very little work to these recordings. They were just lifted from their master cassettes and digitised in our studios, and normalised to 0dB. That was it. Everything sounds just as it was. The cassettes, nearly 40 years old, have stood the test of time very well.

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations. Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud. There is likely to be different extra information given on the two separate pages, as the words come from the keyboards of two separate writers. We recommend you check out both.

Losing Your Grip is down five places from number one to number six. Last month was the first time it achieved the top spot, despite being near the top for the past few months. This song has also been both the number two song, and the number three song, twice each recently. It has been discovered by other SoundCloud members and added to some playlists at SoundCloud, which has certainly helped its popularity.

Losing Your Grip is an odd and perhaps under-rated song, especially so when it was contemporary. There is a glorious chorus and three verses, each being about a different person, and their gradual descents via entropy into insanity. The sections between the verses are in 6/8, or are atemporal dissolutions into strangeness and noise, with all the knobs on the Electric Mistress turned up to full.

Losing Your Grip was also performed by Wud. Ken did a fine job of singing the vocal parts. You can enjoy the Wud version of Losing Your Grip at the HearThis website by clicking here.

Take It Or Leave It is a re-entry at number seven, and is a song in G major that George wrote in the summer of 1985. It was written very early in the morning, probably after returning home from a night of crazies. It appears on Volume V Side B of the cassettes.

Take It or Leave It became something of a campfire favourite for some of George’s female friends, although George himself was never especially fond of it. He wrote it for a particular female friend who always kept him in her friend zone.

This song was also performed by Wud. It was Ken who came up with the last ten notes of melody, which he played on the acoustic guitar at the very end of the song. George taught Ken Take It or Leave It when it was still very fresh, and Ken always did a splendid job of singing it.

* None of our other acts made it onto the September 2026 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in September 2026, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The September 2026 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.