News

A major upgrade of track information for Flicker‘s album At Least 1000 Words has taken place at Explicit Music and Bandcamp. The SoundCloud update will come later because we are waiting on a third party to update some information for us.

There will be further exciting Flicker news when this happens. Please be sure to follow us on Twitter and bookmark our News service to be informed about these things.

We often post news to our Bandcamp community first, and you can join us over there now by clicking here.

Recently, a joyous discovery occured. We managed to find a lot of material from a very long and detailed interview George did whilst at university. The interview took place around the time that Flicker‘s album At Least 1000 Words was being finalised.

Although much of the raw interview material is completely unusable in the form that it is in – it was for the music section of a local college magazine – some of the information contained within is veritable gold dust!

We have mined all of the most important parts and worked with our publishing partners at Explicit Music to rewrite the pages for At Least 1000 Words. We hope you enjoy all the wonderful new data, backstories and fun facts that are now available to be read.

Have you ever studied all the sleeve notes of a favourite album, devouring ever scrap of information, and felt yourself wondering, yearning for more? Following this latest upgrade of track information, each track at Explicit Music and Bandcamp now has far more detail to consume and enjoy.

If you would like access to all of the tracks on Flicker’s At Least 1000 Words album, complete with the major upgrade of track inforrmation, we recommend downloading it from Bandcamp. You can do that by clicking here.

To read about all 17 of the tracks on the album at our partner site Explicit Music, please click here.

For some awesome Flicker merchandise, please click here to go the band’s third party merch store.

For more Flicker links, click here to open their new linktree.

Cander released to Bandcamp? After all these years? Surely not!

Yes, it’s true. Cander has been released to Bandcamp at last, after many, many months of this being promised in the ‘coming soon’ section of the Wud Records homepage.

Cander is a seminal 1985 recording lifted from a 38-year-old cassette. As such it will never match today’s perfect squeaky clean audio of the mainstream radio. It is what it is, with wrong notes and passing lorries and all included. And it sounds a whole lot better than it did before we played with it!

According to the cover notes, Cander was recorded on 4th and 11th September 1985. It is the earliest recording of Laughing Sun in existence, as far as we know.

Cander features the teenage musical talents of Pok, George, Grape and Ken. We hear them trying out a variety of some of Pok‘s most classic early songs, when those songs were still in their young days.

The songs on Cander are a few of the songs that these young gentlemen had played from time to time since the days of Now. They had been performed live at Sidmouth International Folk Festival earlier that summer. There is also a cover of Hawkwind‘s Master of the Universe in the collection, a song the ensemble loved and had jammed on many occasions.

A couple of other songs were on the original cassette as well, including The Centre of the Cyclone and some odd bits of jamming. Unfortunately they are of such poor quality that we decided to exclude them from the release.

A new version of The Centre of the Cyclone is in the works and will be included in Pok’s Anthology album. Several of the Cander songs already appear on Pok‘s Anthology, and a few others are still in the works and waiting to be added.

Cander has already been available to hear and enjoy at our website and on SoundCloud for several years. Following the recent upgrade to the control room, this was an early sandbox experiment to try things out with the new studio monitors.

We have been experimenting with various recordings to see what can be achieved. Another of our experiments, The Subterraineans Demo, was added to Bandcamp a little over a month ago.

Pok’s fabulous artwork for the front cover depicts “an informal moment at number 31”. After all, Cander is a Wud Dictionary term, meaning ‘a meeting of friends after a long time apart’. Pok’s unique drawing style is highly distinctive and we are very fond of his amazing creations.

Other versions of some Cander songs were revived by both Alchemeon and the temporary “electric elves” reimagining of the Spacegoats. We cordially invite you to enjoy listening to both.

As well as upgrading the audio for Cander‘s Bandcamp release, we have also updated all of the different song and album web pages across various websites. These include Bandcamp, SoundCloud and our partners at Explicit Music. Now you can read the backstories to each song as well as the whole album as you enjoy listening.

With more audio upgrades and plenty of new releases coming soon, we highly recommend you bookmark our linktastic News pages, join our Bandcamp community, and follow us on Twitter, where we make all such announcements.

If you would like to listen to or download Cander from Bandcamp, please click here.

All kinds of music is coming soon! We are very excited about all the things that we are currently working on and would like to give you an update on what it all is.

Ever since the recent control room upgrade took place, we have been conducting a number of… experiments… in the new sandbox/play area. This has been to help understand the new system better. It has also enabled our engineering team to apply all the theory that has been learned during the months and years of frustration, where nothing seemed to make a lot of difference. It has been reported that removing most of the ‘enhancements’ that were applied at various stages of the mixing process has been a very effective place to begin.

We started with some old legacy recordings. The Subterraineans Demo was upgraded and released last month.

Laughing Sun‘s Cander has also been upgraded, although we are still waiting on some artwork before its release. You may have noticed that Cander has been removed from the ‘coming soon’ section on the homepage of the Wud Records website, as this really is coming very soon.

Please understand that both of these two collections of songs are very old recordings that have been salvaged from cassette. As such they are never going to match Miley or Harry or Justin in terms of modern digital high quality sound recording values.

We anticipate that not much more will be achieved before next week due to other pressures and events currently taking place. However, there really is all kinds of music coming soon. Here is what we are working on and planning for the next few months.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

The entire Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is being remixed and remastered and will be re-released in the next few weeks. It is about halfway done.

Once that one is finished, their Cherry Smoke Empire album will undergo the same treatment.

Additionally, there is a collection of five previously unheard original songs by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. These songs have been developed a little further during the early part of this year. They still require a lot more work. We are looking forward very much to their completion.

Flicker

Not only did we release a new tune by the amazing Flicker recently, we have also remastered their HappySad album.

Several more tracks are fairly close to being finished and we shall, of course, be letting all Flicker fans know about such developments in our News service and on Twitter. The HappySad album is slated to be 19 tracks long when it is finished, so there is still a fair way to go.

We are probably not going to remaster At Least 1000 Words by Flicker unless the analysis shows beyond all doubt that the remastering needs to be completed urgently.

Dark Company

Dark Company‘s Signmaker and Rage in Heaven albums are also unlikely to be remastered any time soon, again pending further analysis. We are planning to re-release all of the singles from these two albums, although that may not happen especially quickly.

The Alien Heat album, however, will be inching towards its completion. A few things still need to be tracked during the remixings and remasterings described above. Then the final mixes and masters of the Alien Heat songs will be completed and released. We are planning various single releases as well as the album.

Pok the Bard

Pok‘s Anthology album is also being remixed and remastered. We are hoping to add new songs to the album at the same time as the remixing, with both The Sidewalk Song and She’s Beautiful approaching the end of their tracking phase and entering production and mixing. Although the remixing of Anthology has not begun yet, it will start in the next few days.

And That’s Not All!

We are planning to add further material to the Archives as well as working on all kinds of music promised in the ‘coming soon’ section of our homepage.

More news on individual projects will be coming your way soon. To keep up with the latest on all kinds of music we are working on, be sure to bookmark our News service and follow us on Twitter.

The April 2023 Chart

The top ten tracks for April 2023 on Bandcamp and SoundCloud have been published in a new compilation.

How Did We Calculate The April 2023 Chart?

The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

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!

We have combined the stats from both SoundCloud and Bandcamp for the new chart. This is because it will not be long until all our Bandcamp tracks are also published at SoundCloud.

Radio play and songs published at other platforms are omitted from the statistics. There may be further developments when our music is added to more platforms.

Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored, as are likes and comments from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music. We have ways of knowing these things.

Only you, the listener, can influence our April 2023 playlist. So if there is a track you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it and share it to your social media feeds! 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 April 2023 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 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 seem 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 oursevles 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, both of which opened recently, 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 April 2023 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They didn’t simply dominate the chart in April 2023, by claiming six of the top ten positions, all from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album. They also retook the top position, with their cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Astronomy climbing back to the summit, after falling back one place to two in March 2023.

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. We recently released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and sent it for global distribution.

Since our recent studio upgrade earlier this year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Cosy Lube Turtle is currently on the slab, being remixed and remastered ready for a re-release in the coming weeks. More news on this will follow soon.

Astronomy is a profoundly beautiful and haunting song 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 a little more produced in the opening bars 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.

A re-entry at number three is Then Came the Last Days of May. This 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 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.

Last month‘s number five climbs one to number four on the chart this month. Seven Screaming Diz-Busters is 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 it was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performance by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

Falling one place to number eight is the fourth Cosy Lube Turtle song. This one is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Wings Wetted Down, from the 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album.

Wings Wetted Down is a masterfully crafted piece of songwriting, with its clever key changes and all its vocal and instrumental melodic hooks. It is considered a deep cut among BÖC fans. The version performed by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is largely true to the original, with the addition of a riff section that Derek solos over.

The fifth song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is a re-entry at this month‘s number nine. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot is another Blue Öyster Cult cover, which originates from the Long Island quintet’s 1972 eponymous album, Blue Öyster Cult. The original version is highly psychedelic.

When covered by The Bastard Sons of Dennis, Chuck tunes his guitar to DADGAD. The twinkly noises at the beginning are created using an old computer fan and its assorted janglesome danglesome appendages. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot was often performed first in a set of Bastard Sons of Dennis songs, due largely to the tuning.

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.

The Subterraineans

Short and Sweet is an amazing, beautiful, wonderful, epic classic rock song. It drops from last month‘s top spot to this month‘s number two.

A massive favourite for many years, Short and Sweet used to profoundly affect people listening to it whenever The Subterraineans played this song live. Like many of Dean’s songs, it is a rather poignant prophetic prediction of Dean’s ultimate fate and how he felt about his struggles.

Short and Sweet is well over eight minutes long and feels much shorter somehow. Jerry’s bass sounds a bit uncertain at the start, but he always played it that way so he must have had some idea what he was doing!

The main reason for the success of The Subterraineans these last couple of months is the recent remastering and rerelease of their Demo from 1987. The difference in sound quality of the recording after its enhancement in the new studio is remarkable.

The Subterraineans Demo was recorded on a 4-track cassette portastudio in 1986 and 1987, and mixed onto cassette. The audio degraded even further over the intervening 36 years. Even though it was never going to match today’s standards of perfect high fidelity, we felt that this recording was worthy of addition to our catalogue at Bandcamp.

Dean tragically committed suicide in 1994 by jumping from the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. He was just 29 years old. He received absolutely no professional help from the uk medical or social professions. With a little professional help he would surely still be here with us today. He was a unique and charming character and his passing was a great loss to the world.

As such, we have decided to donate all proceeds of the sale of this EP and its individual tracks, beyond the first euro, to The Samaritans. They do amazing and dificult work, trying to prevent more people jumping to their deaths from that notorious bridge.

Flicker

Flicker enjoyed a good month and achieved two of the entries on the new Wud Records chart. Both came from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

As many Flicker fans will have observed, Osobní Hv​ě​zda was released during April 2023. If it were available on SoundCloud, it would have been a new entry in the April 2023 chart at number six. That was from Bandcamp streams alone, which are generally around only a sixth of the streams we typically see on SoundCloud.

However, Osobní Hv​ě​zda is not yet available on SoundCloud. Should you wish to enjoy hearing or even downloading Osobní Hv​ě​zda by Flicker, please click here and listen on Bandcamp instead.

Welcome to the Family is up four places from nine to five on the new chart. Welcome to the Family is a wonderful latin-jazz-rock-fusion instrumental. It builds from its acoustic guitar beginings to a heady climax of guitar feedback and noise. There is a lovely bass solo from Dave, who also plays all the keyboard parts with outstanding aplomb and sensitivity.

Welcome to the Family was inspired by The Godfather by Mario Puzo and a new chord from a Portuguese sea shanty. It is one of Flicker‘s most enduring and popular releases.

Down one position this month is Oily Road Hideaway at number seven. This is a delightful and catchy latin jazz dance. Oily Road Hideaway is the only track from Flicker‘s first album with programmed drums. It also has twin bass guitars playing in unison, with Dave panned to the right on his Fender and George panned to the left on the Plank.

A very unusual instrument called a string fish appears towards the end of the tune. This is a home-made creation, from the workshop of Pyg frontman Martin Dearmunn. A string fish is a little like a pair of dulcimers or zithers, joined together at an acute angle. The strings are vertical and played with fingers, like a harp. To play a scale, the player must alternate between the left and right side, like a kalimba.

Dark Company

It’s been a decent month for Dark Company, with a song from Alien Heat on the chart and a couple of others within a gnat’s whisker of the new top ten. Alien Heat is a fantastic work-in-progress album that we shall be attempting to finish as soon as possible.

Falling from number three to number six is Ship to Shore. 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!”.

* None of our other acts made it onto the April 2023 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in April 2023, 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 April 2023 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.

April 2023 Musical Discoveries

A brand new playlist of all the favourite musical discoveries of the Wud Records team has been published at SoundCloud. All of the artists on it are amazing independent or unsigned artists who are making great music that simply aches to be heard.

These artists are not associated directly with Wud Records in any way. We simply accumulated songs that we all liked during April 2023 into one agreed playlist and published it on the first day of the new month.

Tracks have been arranged according to the number of plays at the time of publishing, starting with the fewest. Tracks that are early in playlists tend to receive more plays than later tracks. We are inclined to believe that the music which has had the fewest streams needs the best chance of exposure.

If you find some new favourites on there, why not shout about them on your social media channels? It costs you nothing to do so. The artists responsible for creating the music will welcome such word-of-mouth exposure. Many of your friends and followers would enjoy hearing the music too. At the very least… you might end up making an independent musician’s day.

Sharing Is Very, Very Important !!

Sharing is a massive help for independent artists. They don’t have big corporations and mainstream media saturating every channel with their product. Every independent share counts.

Giving something a ‘like’ is nice, but sharing exposes the artist to your followers. This means that anybody in your community can see and click on what you shared. They can potentially enjoy it as well. It enables somebody new to discover the artist and become their newest fan. You create the chance for that to happen.

Are you a musician whose SoundCloud track we liked, shared or tweeted during the last month or so? If you are, there is a possibility that one of your tracks might be on this new playlist.

Can you complete the challenge of listening to every track on a musical discoveries compilation? If you manage it, tell us! Tell the music makers involved. Tell the world on social media how you feel about what you heard. The people concerned would love to know your thoughts.

We appreciate the fact that in 2023 not many have the time, patience or attention span to listen to even one track all the way through, let alone a whole playlist. Anybody who listens to even half of a musical discoveries compilation is somebody of exceptional stamina.

We tend to big up on Twitter the people who manage to listen to a whole playlist. If you want a bit of free promotion from Wud Records on Twitter, you know what to do.

Towards the bottom of the page is a list of the artists and tracks in the compilation. The artist name is clickable and links to an external website where you can find out, hear and see more of the artist in question. Sometimes finding these links can take quite a bit of research as many artists are not especially skilled at linking all their pages together.

A disclaimer! Clearly we cannot take responsibility for any of the content or functionality of these pages. If you find that something isn’t working as it should, please let us know what’s up and we’ll try to find a remedy.

The links we use are for future-proofing. If the artist decides to leave SoundCloud or removes their track from that platform, you might still be able to enjoy hearing them elsewhere with a cunning click of the mouse.

If you are the artist and would prefer us to use a different link to the one we added, or if we got something a bit wrong, please send an email to info@wudrecords.co.uk so we can fix it for you.

Generally we try to use the artist’s own site where possible. This helps drive a little traffic to the artist’s website, which may not receive many visits compared to e.g. facebook or spotify. We also tend to link to something a bit more future-proof than “Listen to our latest single!” as we hope these playlists will be around for a long time to come.

We only linked to SoundCloud as a last resort when we were unable to find anything else, as users can already click the track and go to the artist’s SoundCloud page for themselves.

Free Promo For Great Music

We hope that a lot more people will find and listen to the wonderful songs on this new playlist of musical discoveries. Each and every track has something that we felt was special or interesting in some way. In many cases it was a tough job to choose just one track from an artist.

The playlist is very eclectic, so there is probably something on there to suit every taste. If the track you are listening to isn’t quite doing it for you, skip to the next one and perhaps that will please your ears more. Sometimes similar tracks end up next to each other, and sometimes extremely different tracks do, so we recommend you just try it for yourself.

In addition to the latest compilation being our pinned tweet on Twitter, every week on Twitter we boost a previous Musical Discoveries playlist and a featured track from that playlist. The featured track is chosen by the Wud Records team and is one which is a real favourite amongst us.

All of the featured tracks can be found on a separate page at our website by clicking here, or on SoundCloud by clicking here.

On Twitter we encourage people to vote for the next featured track. These votes are added to the votes cast by our team. All the featured tracks form an additional compilation, which we also tweet frequently.

Generally we try to have a full tweeting day at least three days each fortnight. Since late 2021 things have become very busy, meaning we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. That may change in the future.

We tend to take a break from tweeting over the winter months. Recent developments regarding the upheavels at Twitter are concerning and have thrown our presence there into jeopardy. We shall be monitoring the situation and may abandon the platform if things go bad.

How We Work It

If you would like the opportunity to be included in a future compilation, first you need to follow us on SoundCloud so we can follow you back. You can even enjoy hearing some of the music by our fabulous bands whilst you’re there. :)

We follow everyone back who follows us on SoundCloud, providing you have original music and you are not some kind of phony pointless scamming account.

There are many scammers who can allegedly make it seem that people have been listening to your music. The ‘plays’ come from bots and click farms. Nobody will engage with the music or even hear it. It is very easy to spot a track that has been boosted in this way, so just don’t do it. Spend your hard-earned musical coins on something useful!

We generally listen to at least seven songs, starting with the spotlighted tracks if there are any. After that we go to the most recent by clicking on your ‘tracks’. This way we can hear both the things you want us to hear the most (your spotlighted tracks), and then whatever you have been releasing to SoundCloud most recently. This enables us to get a rough feel of what you are all about and what you are doing. We also read your bio.

Our people listen to everyone we follow at SoundCloud on a first-in-first-out basis. It may take a few weeks for us to reach the newest additions. We always have a massive amount of music to listen to, and we use a quorum of a minimum three listeners, so please be patient and eventually you will be heard.

April 2023 continues a seventh year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 81 compilations of amazing independent music you almost certainly never heard before! Why not put one on in the background whilst you’re busy pottering around the house or doing what you are doing? Something is bound to leap out at you.

Listen and Enjoy

If you would like to listen to the new playlist of April 2023 Musical Discoveries over at SoundCloud, please click here.

To enjoy the new playlist of great music here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

If you would like easy access to all of the previous musical discoveries playlists, please click here and bookmark the page. Remember that we publish a new playlist absolutely full of largely undiscovered musical treasures every month and who knows – one might even include you!

Osobní Hv​ě​zda by Flicker is a brand new Wud Records release! Osobní Hv​ě​zda has been added to Flicker‘s growing HappySad album. You can enjoy it exclusively at the Wud Records website by clicking here and Bandcamp by clicking here, for now.

Osobní Hv​ě​zda means ‘Personal Star’ in Czech. It was composed on guitar in a drop-D tuning, early in 2001, shortly before George went to Prague to visit his friends there.

Several of the tunes that he had composed very recently at that time had no title, so he asked a few of his Czech friends for ideas for what they should be called. The title ‘Personal Star’, or Osobní Hv​ě​zda, was suggested by Lenka. After she heard it, she liked it very much and wholeheartedly approved.

Osobní Hv​ě​zda is in the key of D minor (the saddest of all keys, according to Nigel Tufnell). After the initial D minors and Cs, the piece goes to an Eb maj7. After each Eb maj7 there is a Bb maj7, then an F6, then Bb maj7 again and then an Ab maj7(-5), which leads in to the Gm7 and Fm13 section. There is a gloriously heavy G – F# – Eb – D riff before the whimsical melodic section.

The guitar is played on Nicodemus. You can hear how new and spanglesome the guitar strings are. Maxx plays the Plank and Sven plays mostly Tama and Sabian.

The original guitar and bass for Osobní Hv​ě​zda sounded muddy. Flicker could never quite make them how they wanted them to be. In the end, the guitar and bass parts were scrapped and completely re-recorded from scratch using the Neural DSP Quad Cortex.

George used a few factory presets from the Quad Cortex. These patches were called Banger Fish (for the clean tones), Major Strat Vibes (for the dirty tones), We Love Herbie (for the filthy dirty heavy section) and Victor’s Marshall (for the second guitar that plays from the start of the D riff in the centre of the tune to where the heavy part begins again). All three pickup configurations on the guitar were used at various stages.

Maxx created his own patches from scratch on the Quad Cortex, as he likes to do such things.

Flicker asked Alison Reynolds to add some cello to the track and she did an absolutely wonderful job. She was also asked to create some odd noises, like bouncing her bow on the strings or banging the body of her instrument. The results were even better than hoped for and worked perfectly with the xylophone.

You can check out some of Alison’s own compositions at her website here: https://alisonreynoldsmusic.com/

A real wooden xylophone was originally used for the track, although in the end Flicker preferred the sound of the MIDI version. This was from a program called Marimba on a vintage synthesizer called the Emu Pro-Cussion. You can read more about this wonderful synth/drum expander here: www.vintagesynth.com/emu/procussion.php

Originally we were going to release Osobní Hv​ě​zda back last summer. It was this track that convinced us we simply could not trust what we were hearing in the studio, whereupon we set about trying to upgrade the monitor system. This was eventually achieved – earlier than expected – in early February 2023. You can read about it by clicking here.

Since then our people have been very busy fixing things that were sounding all wrong. Results have been very pleasing! We hope you will all enjoy the fruits of our endeavours as they start to trickle through the system.

Altogether there are 19 tracks slated to make up the HappySad album. That means there are 15 more still to be finished and released. As work is completed and tracks are released, we shall of course let all Flicker fans know of these events via Twitter and in our News service.

Osobní Hv​ě​zda is a piece of multifacetted shiny precious rock, but exactly what kind of rock is it? Progressive? Pyschedelic? Hard? Classic? Alternative? All of these? We don’t know. You must decide!

To listen to or download Osobní Hv​ě​zda from Flicker’s HappySad album at Bandcamp, please click here.

If you would like to listen to or download the whole HappySad album from Bandcamp as it stands right now, please click here.

Should you prefer to enjoy HappySad in its current state right here at the Wud Records website, please click here.