News

The March 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for March 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

We shall elaborate further 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. Finito!

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 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 €7 album is worth about 3300 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, and you can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

About a year ago, SoundCloud decided, in their seemingly infinite wisdom, to downgrade their excellent ‘Stats’ for premium users (such as ourselves) to something that was so completely and unbelievably dreadful it was unfit for purpose. They call it ‘Insights’, and they were surprisingly uninsightful, despite the somewhat profoundly misleading nomenclature.

Somebody at the company thought it would be a good idea to take a system that worked spectacularly well in real time, and replace it with another that was completely riddled with inconsistencies and errors. One could even observe the data changing right before one’s eyes! Even some of the most basic functions, such as choosing particular date ranges, no longer worked properly. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? Whilst we still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud, there has been enough improvement in data quality in the last couple of months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

The data from the Wud Records Snotify for Artists pages covers everybody at that platform on our label. We also use the Snortify data from our distributors CD Baby and Soundrop.

Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely right now. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, which don’t cover the exact range of dates we would like them to, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.

Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.

Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/

This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.

Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.

Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.

The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so wrong. It’s a proper mess.

Not only that, two of our songs have had “excessive” plays. This excess has resulted in punitive measures, which we are still protesting. It seems ridiculous, but that is what has happened.

One such song, Future Sadness Past from Dark Company‘s Signmaker album, has been removed from spotify completely. In order to punish us for having our song played “excessively”, the rest of the Signmaker album has also been removed from spotify.

The other missing track is Welcome to the Family by Flicker, from At Least 1000 Words. This track seems to have been hidden from the public.

Our distributors have so far been unable to help regarding these issues.

As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. They are, after all, extremely shabby corporate scumbags, and have treated our label, and every other independent artist, with absolute contempt. Perhaps because we have spoken out repeatedly against their egregious policies?

Various members of our team have had quite heated argumnets about the merits or otherwise of leaving our music on the platform. For now it is still there, because it is easier to leave it there, than it is to remove it and then put it back. More news on this to come soon.

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

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

In Conclusion…

Previously the algorithm we used gave greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

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? :)

How Did We Calculate The March 2025 Chart?

The latest system is based upon some of the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together to make the new Top Ten.

We have combined the stats from the general trends and tendencies from all of the services mentioned above. Each platform is represented and results from each are weighted and added together. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored. The feedback from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music is now rendered insignificant.

Only you, the listener, can influence our April 2025 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.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during March 2025 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 a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams. 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 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.

Who’s In The March 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten is probably the craziest chart we’ve ever published! There is one non-mover and there are nine new entries. Only the first one we published had more!

Pok the Bard

Congratulations to Pok the Bard! We have started to release Pok‘s Anthology album’s tracks to SoundCloud (as mentioned in this News post) and doing so has made a big impact. Pok has claimed many of the top spots recently, including two on our new chart.

Staying at number one is a song by Pok called It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain. This is a beautiful and historic song that Pok composed when he was just a teenager. It was performed by Laughing Sun, Spacegoats and Alchemeon before being recorded and added to Pok‘s Anthology album.

The production is suitably huge. We tried to incorporate elements of all the important parts from the song’s various incarnations and outings. It is also one of our lengthiest chart toppers, at nine minutes and fifteen seconds.

It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain is in the key of E minor. There is a lot of Em7 and A7 throughout the instrumental sections. You may also hear the delightful key change for the “What have we done” sections, where the guitars play C7 – D7 – Gm7 – C7, before resolving to Am7 – C – Em. The tempo varies between 65 and 77 BPM and there is a screenshot of the tempo track at the bottom of the news post announcing the release of the song.

A brand new entry from Pok the Bard is at number eight. This is the amazing, wonderful, beautiful, wistful, mystical, crazy Silver Ships on the Sea. Loved dearly since the first time we heard it, this particular version has been remixed and remastered and the new audio has replaced the old at Bandcamp, as well as being released to SoundCloud.

What started out as a gentle, folky, nerdy, questioning, acoustic ballad about the elves leaving Middle Earth in their silvery boats has grown into the most insanely hardcore piece of psychedelia you will ever, ever hear. There are four acoustic guitars, three basses, numerous electric guitars, a cello, a rainstick, a schoolgirl’s wooden descant recorder, and a whole lot more to feast your ears upon.

If you can, listen loud on big speakers, or headphones, whilst lying relaxed in a dark room. Let the music take you away, perhaps after you have partaken of something… relaxing. Don’t be afraid to listen again, as you will be sure to have missed some of its details the first time around. Silver Ships on the Sea is one of the most glorious things we have ever released.

Band of Georges

We were absolutely not in the least little bit anticipating the level of dominince over the new chart the Band of Georges has had. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of March! How swiftly things can happen. And what a month it has been for one of our most revered stars, claiming no less than eight spots in the top ten.

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 have 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. For now we have been allowed to release all ten volumes of his early songs in demo form.

All of these songs will take some time to release. Volume I is finished aleady and from tomorrow, with any luck, Volume II will start to appear.

There are five songs from Volume I Side A and three from Volume I Side B.

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.

For Volume I Side A at Wud Records, please click here.

For Volume I Side A at SoundCloud, please click here.

For Volume I Side B at Wud Records, please click here.

For Volume I Side B at SoundCloud, please click here.

* None of our other acts made it onto the March 2025 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in March 2025, 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 March 2025 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.

Release permission granted for the Band of Georges? Never! No way! That would never, ever, ever happen! Or… wait, would it? Could it? Did it??!

George has finally granted Wud Records his permission to release the songs he recorded in 1986 and 1987 on his Tascam 244 cassette portastudio. We have been trying to persuade him to do this for more than a decade!

We have agreed terms with our artist and he has laid down precise stipulations of exactly which songs will be uploaded for posterity with minimal fuss and fanfare, and which can be publicised. Wud Records is unlikely to shout about the release of these songs very much, although occasionally one might receive some social media attention.

So here is a little background.

By 1986 George had composed between 250 and 300 songs. He wanted to bring them to life somehow. He found it most unsatisfactory that these songs should simply languish on many pieces of paper in a green folder, with lots of doodles and band names on it. Songs need to be heard! They are not much use scrawled on paper and stored in a folder.

This very same folder was stolen and destroyed in 1993 by a psychopathic alcoholic ex-girlfriend. Many originals were lost forever.

Soon after, following some drink-driving incidents and attempted suicides, the woman in question was sectioned to a secure mental health institution, where she spent a long time being rehabilitated.

Be all of that is it may, George believed that by the law of averages, if nothing else, there had to be at least one song among them all that would appeal to an A & R representative of a record label. But which one? So he tried a few different methods to record his songs.

First, he tried recording as many parts as he could perform at the same time into a cassette recorder. Then that cassette recording was played back, more or less loudly, whilst performing as many more parts as possible, into another cassette recorder. This second cassette recorder picked up the sound from the first cassette recording, mixed together with the new sounds that were being performed live. This process continued, back and forth, until all of the parts had been recorded.

The sound quality and degradation were truly hideous! Although this method worked, the results were never pleasing. Clearly a new approach was needed.

The next thing George tried was his father’s Tandberg 3000X reel-to-reel machine. This was something that his father had bought in about 1970 and was a part of his home stereo system.

The Tandberg had the possibilty to record onto one of the two stereo tracks, then bounce that onto the other stereo track along with new live audio. That meant the first track could then be used again for more audio. This way it was possible to build up multiple layers of sound.

Once more, this required multiple parts being performed simultaneously whenever possible. The degradation was again hideous, although less so than before. It was not possible to adjust the relative levels of the two sources of sound signal relative to each other, apart from by moving closer to the mic or further away, or turning the amplifier up, or down. There was a lot of guesswork involved. George recorded four complete versions of every song, in the hope that one of them might be good.

Again, although this method worked, the results were not especially satisfactory. It was an improvement on the twin cassette machine method, but not a big one. After about a dozen such recordings, he abandoned the idea as foolishness and returned to the drawing board.

Cassette portastudios were starting to become more ubiquitous at this time. Someone who was a friend of George’s already had one and had been reasonably satisfied by its results. Research led George to believe that the Tascam 244 was arguably the best of the machines available in 1986.

There was a local music store called Bill Greenhalgh which stocked the item, but George managed to find one that was more than £300 cheaper in Lancashire and placed the order. Soon after, the machine arrived and the work began. The whole process was very much a learning curve.

Hearing these songs that have lurked in a dark cupboard for nearly 40 years, with the release permission granted, has been a revelation. What surprised us the most was how good the songs actually are.

All this was despite George‘s considerable reservations. These were mostly due to his lyrics and his singing, neither of which he ever particularly liked. He always says that his voice, to him, does not sound like “a pleasing musical instrument.” He added that he finds his old lyrics too static, as he is liable to change his mind about things, or might wish to express those things differently, over time.

George added that his girlfriends of the day would always complain that the vocals were too quiet. However, we tend to disagree with them. The vocals are somewhat on the loud side. He grumbled that for them, even an a capella rendition would probably have resulted in the vocals being “too quiet”.

There was never a compressor of any kind. Just performances, faders, and human interactions and decisions. Who knows – perhaps someday, these songs may even be remixed and remastered from the original portastudio tapes.

Some of the songs in this collection of material were performed by Fooog Dinboffin and the Release, Now, Sirius Rising, Lemming Meringue, Wud, The Masters of Drone, The Addled Eggs, Rough Terrain, The Ug Brothers and Doctor Watson.

George passed the tapes around the band members of Rough Terrain, which formed in 1987 from the remains of The Subterraineans, a year after he started making these Band of Georges recordings. The rest of the band chose several songs from the tapes to be added to the setlist, including a few rather unlikely ones. Some of the songs we’ve enjoyed the most here at Wud Records are songs that never made it into the set of any band.

The Band of Georges page at Wud Records has received something of an update recently, although the update has so far not been mentioned in the News or on our socials. If you noticed already, give yourself a pat on the back and say “Well done!”.

With the release permission granted, the Band of Georges page will now be the parent page for all of the songs that we have lifted from the original cassette mixes. From that page will spawn a number of child pages. We shall be creating two pages for each Volume – a Side A and a Side B.

It may take some time for all of the pages, albums, songs, etc. to be fully released.

Later on we plan to make a couple of compilations, such as The Concept Album and a ‘Best Of’. News of such things may be published in the Wud Records News Service and on social media, such as BlueSky.

We hope you enjoy listening to these rather unique recordings as much as we did.

If you would like to listen to the first releases, and the oldest songs, which is Volume I Side A, here at Wud Records, please click here.

To listen to Volume I Side A over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

If you would like to visit the parent page for all of the Band of Georges recordings, please click here.

Subsequent volumes will appear in due course. We are likely to edit and add things on the fly, so if you heard something that you found intriguing, please come back and check its pages again sometime soon!

The February 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for February 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

However… in much the same way as nearly all social media platforms become ever more strangled under ever tighter controls, so too does the data from streaming services seem more comprised than in the past. As luck would have it, we believe that, aside from the lateness of the stats coming from some of our distribution services, the quality of the data has improved again recently.

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

Bandcamp Is the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up whether you are a musician or a fan of music, or both. 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. Finito!

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?

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.

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 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.

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, and you can join ours by clicking here.

We believe that the stats we see from Bandcamp are perfectly accurate. Yay!

HearThis

We are considering moving all of our SoundCloud music to HearThis someday because we rather like the platform, even though it is less than 5% of the size of SoundCloud. Their MD has promised us *personally* that his company will not ride roughshod over its userbase without any warning at all in attempts to cut costs, and that is rather appealing.

More news on this will follow in the future.

We’ve had plenty of issues and arguments with SoundCloud over many years, such as our disabled messaging for allegedly ‘spamming’ other artists there, who we dared try to inform about being included in a Musical Discoveries compilation. It would have probably been fine if we’d supported a bunch of major hiphop stars, as that is what SC loves best, instead of the multitude of curious and largely undiscovered wonders we try to support.

Much of our material at HearThis consists of either Archive tracks or oddities. Streams there are not particularly significant at present, although we do include them in the final analysis.

SoundCloud

About a year ago, SoundCloud decided, in their seemingly infinite wisdom, to downgrade their excellent ‘Stats’ for premium users (such as ourselves) to something that was so completely and unbelievably dreadful it was unfit for purpose. They call it ‘Insights’, and they are surprisingly uninsightful, despite the profoundly misleading nomenclature.

Somebody at the company thought it would be a good idea to take a system that worked spectacularly well in real time, and replace it with another that is riddled with inconsistancies and errors. One can even observe the data changing right before one’s eyes! Even some of the most basic functions, such as choosing particular date ranges, no longer works properly. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? In our organisation such sabotage wouild mean instant dismissal. “Put your keys on the table and close the door behind you.”

Whilst we still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud, there has been a significant improvement in data quality recently. Perhaps one day the new ‘Insights’ system will even be as good as their ‘Stats’ system was before they fiddled with it, but we shall have to wait and see.

Shitify

The data from the Wud Records Snotify for Artists pages covers everybody at that platform on our label. We also use the Snortify data from our distributors CD Baby and Soundrop.

Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely right now. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.

Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.

Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/

This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.

As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. More news on this to come soon.

Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.

Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.

The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so wrong. It’s a proper mess.

Not only that, two of our songs have had “excessive” plays. This excess has resulted in punitive measures, which we are still protesting. It seems ridiculous, but that is what has happened.

One such song, Future Sadness Past from Dark Company‘s Signmaker album, has been removed from spotify completely. In order to punish us for having our song played “excessively”, the rest of the Signmaker album has also been removed from spotify.

The other missing track is Welcome to the Family by Flicker, from At Least 1000 Words. This track seems to have been hidden from the public.

Our distributors have so far been unable to help regarding these issues.

As such, we are considering abandoning spotify entirely in the very near future. They are, after all, extremely shabby corporate scumbags, and have treated our label, and every other independent artist, with absolute contempt. Perhaps because we have spoken out against their egregious policies. Repeatedly.

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

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

In Conclusion…

Previously the algorithm we used gave greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

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?

How Did We Calculate The February 2025 Chart?

The latest system is based upon some of the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together to make the new Top Ten. Thank goodness for the Statistics module at university!

We have combined the stats from the general trends and tendencies from all of the services mentioned above. Each platform is represented and results from each are weighted and added together. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored. The feedback from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music is now rendered insignificant.

Only you, the listener, can influence our March 2025 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.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during February 2025 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. 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 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.

Who’s In The February 2025 Top Ten?

There is one new entry, two re-entries, five fallers, one climber and one non-mover in the latest top ten.

Pok the Bard

Congratulations to Pok the Bard! We have started to release Pok‘s Anthology album’s tracks to SoundCloud (as mentioned in this News post) and doing so has made a big impact. Pok has claimed many of the top spots recently, including four on our new chart.

A brand new entry at number one is a song by Pok called It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain. This is a beautiful and historic song that Pok composed when he was just a teenager. It was performed by Laughing Sun, Spacegoats and Alchemeon before being recorded and added to Pok‘s Anthology album.

The production is suitably huge. We tried to incorporate elements of all the important parts from the song’s various incarnations and outings. It is also one of our longest chart toppers, at nine minutes and fifteen seconds.

It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain is in the key of E minor. There is a lot of Em7 and A7 throughout the instrumental sections. You may also hear the delightful key change for the “What have we done” sections, where the guitars play C7 – D7 – Gm7 – C7, before resolving to Am7 – C – Em. The tempo varies between 65 and 77 BPM and there is a screenshot of the tempo track at the bottom of the news post announcing the release of the song.

Holding steady at number five is The Sidewalk Song. This was co-written with Mark Drower and is a very historic and classic old song. The Anthology version we made is based upon a Now recording that Pok and ourselves consider to be largely definitive. The Sidewalk Song is a gloriously bombastic hard rock piledriver in E major, full of youthful self confidence, swagger and braggadocio.

After Now ceased to exist, The Sidewalk Song was subsequently performed by Lemming Meringue and Wud, although Ken’s Robert Plant influenced vocal was never quite up to Mark‘s more wholesome humanistic version. The breakdown section with the added percussion was improvised. The vocal was never performed the same twice, neither by Mark nor by Ken. The chords are very simple and clearly defined, and the traditional shout of “G!!!” is left in, as it was used to warn band members of the upcoming change.

Enjoying its seventh consecutive month on our charts since it was number one in September 2024, Don’t Let It Pass You By climbs four places to number six.

This is such a wonderful cheerful song with a strong positive message. It can bring a smile to the lips of the glummest and most grumpulated miseryguts you know. It would probably help if they like rock music, especially of the hard, classic, blues, country or psychedelic varieties.

Don’t Let It Pass You By may start with a gentle introduction in A major, but then it really kicks in hard when the song proper begins and the key changes to E major. There is plenty of Ibanez Roadstar guitar goodness across the mix, as well as some organ and synth, not to mention the tastiest rhythm section on the planet right now in Maxx and Sven to invigorate your dancing shoes.

Don’t Let It Pass You By is a very historic song, going right back to the early days of Laughing Sun in 1985.

We are very pleased with the latest version of Don’t Let It Pass You By by Pok. There is so much to love about this we recommend you just listen to it yourself, which you can do by clicking here.

A re-entry at number ten is Wear a Feather in Your Hat by Pok. This awesome song tells a most extraordinary tale about a group of travellers in the USA in the 19th Century and a man with purple skin. This really truly is a musical delight and the tale has the most peculiar twist at the end.

Pok plays three guitar parts on his beautiful Gretsch acoustic – one left, one right and a lead part. The lead part was recorded all in one take, and it was the first take. The man’s skills are often under-rated. Maxx and Sven do a fabulous job with the bass and percussives, as always.

Wear a Feather in Your Hat first appears on the Indeed recording by Laughing Sun. The lyrics even say “You can be a man of Wud or you can go insane!” – which seems a relatively easy choice to make.

We probably ought to add that back in 1985, when Pok wrote Wear a Feather in Your Hat and used the word ‘man’, it was widely understood to mean ‘woman’, and indeed ‘everyone’ as well, in an all-encompassing and friendly way, rather than today’s necessity for lengthy politically correct pronoun conjugations and configuarations.

Dark Company

Dark Company had a very good month indeed across all of the platforms we use, ending with them achieving four songs in our newest monthly chart.

Three of the songs were new releases exclusive to SoundCloud in January 2025, with the other being a new exclusive SoundCloud release in December 2024. All four songs are from Dark Company‘s A for Acronym CD 1: SNAFU album.

A for Acronym is a triple album that cosists of three separate parts. SNAFU is a loosely ‘rock’ colllection of songs, VSF is a loosely ‘reggae’ collection of songs, and FUBAR is a collection of songs that don’t quite belong in either of the other two categories.

More A for Acronym songs will be released soon. There is also a new page among Dark Company’s pages at this website for the A for Acronym: SNAFU album, which you can visit by clicking here.

Down one place to number two for February 2025 is Rainy Afternoon by Dark Company. This is a classic rock, or hard rock song, with a clean lead guitar and a shufflesome 12/8 feel.

Originally this song had a dirty lead guitar part, but it somehow didn’t sound right. Then when Zakk tried a clean sound, everything suddenly came together, as simple as that. When we recorded Barry’s growly rhythm guitar, it sounded amazing and very loud! We tried to keep it as loud as possible in the mix, without overdoing it.

Pete’s psychedlic lyrics feature the same melody, which repeats every two lines throughout the whole song. Different chord changes give the illusion of the melody changing, but it doesn’t.

Also down one place from Dark Company‘s A for Acronym album is Pluperfect, another delicious piece of classic rock. It misses most of the lead guitar parts as they haven’t been recorded yet, but it still sounds pretty good like it is. There is even a cowbell, and as everyone knows, you always need more cowbell.

Pete’s vocal was a splendid take and the lyrics are jammed full of wonderful psychedlic imagery. “Sinewave eyeballs in a metal made head, robotic vision that can see through lead” conjures up a wonderful and complex picture in the mind’s eye in just two lines. We also recommend listening out for Maxx’s delightfully and subtlely twiddlesome bassline.

Some of Pete’s lyrics are a little difficult to make out, largely because of the slightly obscure nature of his vocabulary. In case you are having trouble deciphering his message, the lyrics have been included at Pluperfect‘s page on SoundCloud, as well as on its page at Explicit Music.

A re-entry and previously November 2024‘s number one is this month‘s number four. This is a wonderful and extremely catchy song called Decide to Ride, which may end up on the FUBAR CD as it is not especially rocky.

Decide to Ride is an earworm that you may find yourself singing after you’ve heard the chorus. The bouncy piano and subtley complex bass parts are an absolute delight. Josh plays a bit of what he calls “rhythm trumpet”, as well as wringing a few silvery notes through the mute at the end.

Down from number four to number seven is yet another song from Dark Company. Now, The Light is a powerful and bombastic slab of britpop, or hard rock, which smashes the listener in the face from the very first second. It has something of a hint of those two Manchester Gallagher brothers, on one of the best days they ever had.

Zak’s massive wall of guitar is loud sonic blast of pure joy, with the highlights illuminated by Maxx’s thunderous lazer precision bass. The chorus is an earworm you’ll be singing along with straight away and Sven’s drums are refined brutality at its best.

Now, The Light is in G major. The overdubbed guitar solo is highly effective and proves that sometimes the simplest things can work the best. There is a gratuitous Cmaj7 chord to listen out for, as well as one of the “bucket list” 7th chords that is always fun to squeeze into a song somewhere. The one you might spot here is a D7, the others being a G7 and a B7.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

The Bastard Sons of Dennis enjoyed another good month on the chart in February 2025, claiming two of the ten possible positions. Both songs come from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album of Blue Oyster Cult covers.

Since the studio upgrade early in 2023, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Fans of our gruesome twosome can expect some exciting news regarding this album fairly soon. We are waiting on just a single file before making a big announcement.

A progtastic full-band mini-album by the dynamic duo is also in the early stages of finalisation.

Sadly we tend to feel that further recordings of their many remaining Blue Oyster Cult covers seems an unlikely prospect. This is mostly due to “discommunication, disorganisation and general untogetherness”, as the legend who is Paul Bateman once said of them when they were in Rough Terrain.

Then Came the Last Days of May falls two places to number eight. This beautiful song tells a true story of how three university friends of Blue Öyster Cult’s guitarist, Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, were brutally murdered in a drug deal that went horribly and tragically wrong. 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.

February 2025‘s number nine song also falls two places from number seven. Astronomy is a profoundly beautiful and haunting creation. It was composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.

The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is more produced than their live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.

* None of our other acts made it onto the February 2025 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in February 2025, 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 February 2025 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.

It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain is a brand new release from Pok. It has been added to his Anthology album. It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain is now the new first track, although eventually there will be at least two more songs – as yet unfinished – that will come before it on the Anthology album.

It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain is one of the most historic, epic, amazing and important songs we have ever released. Pok wrote this when he was only seventeen years old and it is a remarkable creation from somebody so young.

We clearly remember the first time that Pok played his new song to some of the rest of the Wud posse. It was when he sat on a public bench late one dark evening, just down the hill from St Michael’s church, on Church Hill, Honiton. He was playing a 12-string acoustic guitar with only six strings on it.

Before It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain was released to Pok‘s growing Anthology album, it was performed by Laughing Sun, Spacegoats, Alchemeon, and by various of Pok‘s ensembles of friends.

One of the greatest moments of pure inspiration we have ever witnessed was the creation of the riffs section. It was way back in 1985, a few minutes before the recording of Laughing Sun‘s Cander version. You can enjoy Laughing Sun’s version of the song by clicking here.

It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain was played by the Spacegoats during their “Electric Elves” era, a term coined by Clive, around the turn from 1999 to 2000. You can enjoy their version of the song, performed live at Glastonbury Town Hall, by clicking here.

During the days of Alchemeon, Jim suggested reducing the number of times each riff was played to two of each rather than four, and we kept with Jim‘s arrangement in the Anthology version.

There are two Alchemeon recordings of It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain available for public listening. To hear the Winter 2008-09 version, please click here. For the Spring 2009 version, please click here.

We are all very pleased with the new Anthology version of It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain. It has taken somewhat longer than we anticipated to finish it. We have worked on it almost to the exclusion of everything else in our studios, ever since the release of Pok‘s Don’t Let It Pass You By, already six months ago. Many other things have had to wait for this epic to be finally finished.

There were several tracks of guitars, drums, bass, vocals and keyboards which were all scrapped and re-recorded during the course of creating this seminal recording.

Pok plays his Tanglewood acoustic and Gibson SG electric for the rhythm parts and is panned over to the right. Of the three guitar solos, Pok takes the second on his (subsequently stolen) Ibanez Roadstar II. It lies between the ‘riffs’ section and the ‘rain’ section.

On the left side of the stereo mix you can hear the Yamaha acoustic and Ibanez electric guitars of Fedax, who agreed after bribery to come out of musical retirement for a handful of Pok’s recordings. Fedax also plays the 12-string acoustic and takes the first lead guitar break, as well as the last guitar solo, which comes after the ‘rain’ section.

Josh worked particularly hard, constructing his keyboard parts by analyzing what Jim had done across several Alchemeon recordings, including several that remain in our vault and are not available to for public consumption. Eventually he put together a collection of parts that was a collage of a ‘best of Jim’ and a good dollop of Josh.

Josh used a number of different instruments, including a plonky old upright acoustic piano treated with much reverb and delay, his B3x organ (through a dirt pedal for the solo), a Fender Rhodes and a Wurlitzer. There are also some VST instruments – DSK’s Analog Matrix, Kriminal’s Twilight and the Waldorf Electronics A1.

Maxx is the glue and his somewhat understated bass sticks all of the strings to the rhythm section with beauty, precision and soul. Sven plays his golden spanglesome Slingerland jazz kit, which we didn’t damp too much. He had his eyes closed and a big grin as he made magic with three toms during the ‘rain’ section of the song.

We very much hope you will enjoy hearing this new version of this wonderful Pok classic. Please share it with your friends on social media so that they might enjoy it as well.

Soon we shall be working on Pok‘s next new release, as well as remixing and remastering more of his old classics that already make up his Anthology album. This became necessary once our studios had something of an upgrade, two years ago.

All of the Anthology tracks that have been reworked have been released at SoundCloud. You can hear them all by clicking here.

To read more about It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain and to read the official lyrics whilst listening, please click here to go to the page at the Explicit Music website.

If you would like to listen to it over at SoundCloud, please click here.

To download the song from Bandcamp, or to simply listen to it at that awesome website, please click here.

If you would like to visit Pok’s Anthology album page right here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

Due to technical issues, all Wud Records Twitch streaming has ceased. For now, at least. Hopefully normal service will resume soon.

Unfortunately the old and rather dodgy laptop we’ve been using in the control room of our studios has become exceedingly poorly and will need some care to make it run again, if that is even possible. It was about 20 years old and not terribly good, so in actual fact it is wonder that it has lasted as long as it has.

As such, it means that our studios are now completely offline and all Twitch streaming is on hold. Also, it means we are unable to refer to engineering documents, download samples, meet our musicians on live Skype, and all kinds of other inconveniences. So, all in all, this situation is rather confufulating.

Due to the very secure location of our studios, we had to install special equipment to allow studio internet traffic to pass through the main electricity supply cables. It is unusual, but certainly effective.

If the old laptop can be repaired, we shall resume streaming after setting everything up once more. This may take a while as our nearest computer repair specialist (who is a genius!) is about 30 miles away. One of the few disadvantages of being in a tiny village in an enormous forest at the edge of national park near where Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic all meet.

Should it turn out that the old laptop cannot be repaired, we have a potential contingency plan involving building another desktop. We have almost enough parts lying around from previous computer upgrades to the various machines in our organisation to make this a possibility. However, it will take time and work, so please bear with us on this front.

Instead of streaming, we will attempt to upload more videos to the Wud Records YouTube account for you to see and hopefully enjoy. New video is more likely to be announced on BlueSky and Twitter rather than in our News service, so please be sure to follow us on those platforms.

When we are able to stream again, we shall make a further news post as well as announcing it on BlueSky and Twitter.

During our dark screen time, feel free to follow us on Twitch now! Then you will be ready for when we are back up and running. You can follow us on Twitch by clicking here.

In the meantime, here is some music.

https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/

A third of SNAFU, the first CD of Dark Company‘s forthcoming triple CD album A for Acronym, is live on SoundCloud by now. We hope you are enjoying this new album of songs by Dark Company. More songs will be added to the album in the coming weeks.

We have paused the release of the second third of SNAFU for a short time. This is because it seems likely that there will be other releases by different artists on our roster coming very soon. We are naturally very excited about this! More news will follow in the near future.

To be certain you don’t miss such events, please sign up to our mailing list. You can do so by clicking here. We don’t spam people or bother anyone very often.

You can also follow us on BlueSky and Twitter to see what is new in the wonderful world of Wud Records.

The six songs from Dark Company‘s forthcoming triple CD album A for Acronym released to the public domain so far are all work in progress. Each will require a fair amount of work to bring them up to the standard required for distribution to the major streaming services.

This will clearly take some time, as there are older Dark Company albums that will need to be finished first. However, for fans of Dark Company, we know you appreciate being able to hear their songs, even unfinished. SoundCloud is a very good platform for exactly this.

The second (VSF) and third (FUBAR) CDs of A for Acronym songs will be released gradually as well, once all of the songs from the first CD are publicly available for listening.

If you would like some teasers for forthcoming songs on Dark Company’s A for Acronym CD 1: SNAFU album, all of the lyrics have already been published at the Explict Music website. You can read them, along with other details, such as performers and fun facts, by clicking here.

If you would like to listen to A for Acronym CD 1: SNAFU by Dark Company, as it stands right now, here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

To listen to it over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.