News

The hot summer sun and some of life’s other distractions have caused a slight lull in the activities of Wud Records in recent times. Everyone connected with Wud Records seems to have been away or busy or ill for some time. However, there has been some action and it’s about time we gave you an update as it’s been a while.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis have been mostly rehearsing and writing new material. There have been a few shows here and there, but not so many of late as the boys have been either busy or broken. We anticipate them returning to more regular gigs from next week and they are in search of some venues where they might play for longer and perhaps even be paid for doing so. They are also attempting to put a PA together and after the demise of the Black Horse’s open mic night and allegedly The Angel’s too, and are contemplating finding a venue where they can run one of their own.

Dark Company’s first album, Signmaker, has been digitally remastered and we hope to be able to bring it to you here in the next few days. We are planning a few special offers with the re-release of this album so keep a look-out for those. The Bad Habits album is approaching the mastering stage with just two more sings to finish up. George has been creating and recording baritone guitar parts on various songs across their spectrum of albums and Pete has been tidying up some of his vocal parts. We have also worked on some of Dark Company’s archive material and hope to publish some of their performances live in 1994 here in the reasonably near future.

In news of our other bands, George has again been attempting to lay down some baritone guitar on a couple of tracks for Flicker. A little archiving has been done for Now and an old Space Goats gig has been deconstructed and may be making an appearance on a page in the ‘miscellaneous’ section here soon.

Finally, we’d like to wish Nikita all the very best for her end-of-year show coming up at The Phoenix on Sunday. Nikita runs the open mic night at The Hole in the Wall on Tuesdays which is well worth a visit if you are able.

We have finally mixed and uploaded One Heart, the 14th song from Dark Company’s Bad Habits album. It is a song about life, as in a person’s whole life. We recommend that you wear a long black leather coat and dark glasses when listening. Beware the evil sub-bass!

Over the last week or so we’ve been busy refining, adjusting and tweaking various parts of the Wud Records website and the Explicit Music site as well. These tweaks include the changing of various graphical objects, the addition of extra links to ease site navigation, an assortment of fine-tunings to all of the news posts so that each band’s news can be viewed more easily, the ‘Contacts’ page has been repaired, and links have been added to the Explicit Music site’s ‘Lyrics and Information’ pages. They link back to the Wud Records site so that anybody reading about a song by one of our bands over at that site can listen to the songs easily here.

We have also added some new items to our shop. These include the full album collections of the various albums that are available and some genuine Wud Artifacts which will be coming online soon. We hope to be able to add more items to the shop in the near future and plan to upgrade the sonic items available there too.

Sad news came our way today. It would seem that the open mic night at Exeter’s Black Horse has now properly ended. We were informed by the organisers earlier today and it does not appear as if there is another suitable venue for the boys to use. A sad day indeed.

In other news, Andy is back from Croatia and earlier today the Bastard Sons of Dennis ran through their set, including their two newest songs Seven Screaming Diz-Busters and Quicklime Girl (Mistress of the Salmon Salt). Their next performance will be at The Hole in the Wall, Castle Street, Exeter on Tuesday 18th May, and they plan to arrive a little earlier (from 8pm) in the hope of being able to perform for longer.

It’s up! We’ve finished and uploaded the beta mix of Way to Go from Dark Company’s forthcoming Bad Habits album. Parental advisory! This is the sweary version and we shall make a radio/child-friendly version of it as well at some point soon.

Way to Go is a darkly amusing rock/blues number about modern life in which we found a use for some of the out-takes. It motors along and everyone involved did a great job in making this song.

Way to Go is the 13th song on Dark Company’s Bad Habits album. Only the final three songs now need to be brought up to the pre-mastering stage.

New mixes of two of Dark Company’s songs from the forthcoming Bad Habits album have been uploaded to the Wud Records website. They can be found in the default Flamplayer as well as the Bad Habits Flamplayer, and one of them (Don’t Look Down) is the opener for the Heavenly Harmonicas compilation on the Dark Company’s homepage here at Wud Records. The two songs are both fine examples of Pete’s lyrical tongue-in-cheek gallows humour.

Don’t Look Down is a mad bluesy rock number with a saucy shuffle and a harp that sounds like it was blown by a hurricane. A Pocket Full of Rye is a kick-ass folk song in the tradition of bands such as The Levellers and The Pogues. We hope you enjoy them both and will return soon as we shall have more songs from the Bad Habits album finished and uploaded in the near future.