News

October 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 October 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 that we shared 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.

As such, 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 (without the spaces) 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 might 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.

We used to tweet just about every day. Since late 2021 things have become increasingly busy, meaning we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. Full tweeting days are now something of a rarity. When they happen, we try to do a clump of full days together over a period of a fortnight, if possible.

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 typically takes 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.

October 2023 continues an eighth year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 87 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 October 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!

Cosy Lube Turtle remixed, remastered and re-released? Huh! You cannot be serious.

Yes, we are! The Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis has been remixed, remastered and re-released. We think it sounds a whole lot better than it did before. We hope you agree!

The upgraded files can now be heard at Bandcamp and SoundCloud. We have also sent the album off for global distribution and it should start appearing on all your favourite streaming platforms very soon.

Although The Bastard Sons of Dennis are not very prolific on social media any more, we made a Linktree for them. You can check them out acoss the whole worldwide web by clicking on their links. You can access their Linktree by clicking right here.

Once the re-released Cosy Lube Turtle album starts to appear on all your favourite streaming platforms, links will be added to the Linktree for The Bastard Sons of Dennis so you can easily find what you want.

Ever since the control room upgrade that took place earlier this year (see this earlier news post: https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/news/wud-records-control-room-upgrade/), we have been analyzing all the material we released going back to the 1990s. A lot of our output has been somehow fundamentally unsatisfactory.

Now our engineering boffins are fixing and upgrading the audio so that it sounds the way it should, rather than the way we thought it should when we couldn’t actually hear it properly.

Cosy Lube Turtle is an album of Blue Oyster Cult covers. All of them are considered ‘deep cuts’ and come from the New York quintet’s first three albums, released between 1972 and 1974.

There are ten songs on the Cosy Lube Turtle album, beautifully performed by Derek Broom, on voice and guitar, and Chuck Palmer, on guitar and voice. The ten songs represent about half of the Blue Oyster Cult covers in the duo’s repertoire.

Cosy Lube Turtle is an anagram. “Obey Cutler Lust” and “Subtle Curly Toe” are possible future albums. Unfortunately, as Derek and Chuck now live in different countries, and life has taken a few twtists and turns along the way, we tend to believe those two albums are rather unlikely. Who knows. Never say “never”.

For those who download a digital copy of the album, we are currently preparing some bonus versions of the songs. These are at this moment a surprise! We shall let fans of The Bastard Sons of Dennis know more details on Twitter, BlueSky and in our News Service when the time comes.

In other news regarding The Bastard Sons of Dennis, we have started deconstructing their Cherry Smoke Empire album. That album will also be given a full remix and remaster, similar to Cosy Lube Turtle. Further updates will be announced in the coming weeks.

Also in the works is a progtastic mini album, or EP, which will feature a full band of Bastards. This project is still in its early stages and we shall let fans of the band know more when there is something worth announcing.

In the meantime, if you would like to download Cosy Lube Turtle remixed and remastered from Bandcamp, please click here.

If you would prefer to listen to it instead, you can do so right here at the Wud Records website by clicking here.

The September 2023 Chart

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

How Did We Calculate The September 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.

If we were to start including streams from Spotify, and other platforms that our distribution companies reach, the only artists to chart would be the ones being distributed. There is a certain disparity between the amount of streams that come from our distributed albums compared to what we put on SoundCloud and Bandcamp, even though our figures there remain good. Perhaps things might change and in the future we might include more platforms. But for now, it remains as it is.

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 October 2023 chart. So if there is a track 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 September 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 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 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 September 2023 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They absolutely dominated the chart in September 2023, claiming six of the top ten positions, including all of the top five. All of the songs are from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album, with their cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Astronomy holding on to the top position for a sixth consecutive month. Can anything top it next month?

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. About a year ago we released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and have sent it for global distribution.

Since the studio upgrade earlier this year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Cherry Smoke Empire is currently on the slab.

We have finished the remixing and remastering of Cosy Lube Turtle now. The new and improved Cosy Lube Turtle album will be ready for a re-release tomorrow. More news on this will follow soon, including news regarding bonus tracks and a possible listening party at Bandcamp.

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 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 brand new entry to the new chart at number two is Teen Archer by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. This is the only song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album that had not previously featured in one of the Wud Records charts. Chuck uses a drop-D tuning and the song always had a wonderful uptempo energy when the duo performed it live.

Teen Archer comes from Blue Öyster Cult‘s fabulous 1973 album Tyranny and Mutation. It has a wonderfully fun and infectious groove to it that The Bastard Sons of Dennis do a splendid job of recreating on two acoustic guitars. There’s even a comedy percussion section as a nod to Albert Bouchard‘s drum break.

Climbing from number nine to number three we see another song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album. This is the opening track, Dominance and Submission. Originally released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1974 Secret Treaties album, The Bastard Sons of Dennis would indulge in various acts of tomfoolery during a live performance of this song. Derek would introduce the band and thank the venue and sound engineer. He would also encourage the crowd to join in with the cries of “Dominance!”, “Submission!”.

In the long pauses before “It will be time!”, Derek and Chuck would spin their guitars upside down. Stuck on the back of Chuck’s guitar was a large sign that read “Throw panties now!”, and on the back of Derek’s was a similar sign that read “If no panties, bras!” Very few undergarments were ever actually tossed onto the stage, apart from on one occasion when somebody had brought a big bag full of old knickers and distributed them to the audience. Both the stage and the band were covered in them.

Falling two places to number four is Redeemed. This song is the final song on Blue Öyster Cult’s 1972 eponymous debut album. Donald Roeser‘s guitar tone at the very end is so incredibly beautiful. We highly recommend listening if you don’t know this song already.

Redeemed is the only recording on Cosy Lube Turtle where Derek and Chuck both played their guitar parts at the same time. They referred to it as their Christmas song, even in summer. The count-in was always improvised and somewhat unpredictable, due to the odd number of beats in the intro. “One, one,” was a popular version.

This month‘s highest re-entry at number five is the next Cosy Lube Turtle song. It 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.

Another re-entry at number eight is the final song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis on the latest chart. 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.

Alchemeon

Alchemeon managed to find representation on our chart this month. Their ever-popular song The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth) pops back into the charts at number six, after an absence stretching back to February.

The Freaks (Shall Inherit the Earth) was a very popular Spacegoats song in the 1990s before Alchemeon started playing it. It was performed around many a uk campfire during various road protests, as well as other infrastructure project protests, such as against the new high speed two railway and Stonehenge tunnel.

Many people protest because they believe that these things cause terrible and unnecessary damage to the landscape of the uk. These projects cost billions to implement, money which arguably could be better spent on many other things. And the big benefit? A small gain in journey times.

Flicker

Flicker had another good month with three entries on the new Wud Records chart. All of them come from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

At Least 1000 Words was remastered and re-released recently. It has also been distributed worldwide to sites such as Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, Tidal, and so on.

If you wish to download the album At Least 1000 Words by Flicker, we absolutely 100% recommend doing so from Bandcamp.

Whilst several of the other platforms also offer a download, they charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price. This means that you pay more, the band recevies less and a big greedy corporation takes a big chunk for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big corporation who can rip people off however they want.

Buying the album from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. It’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible as they are the best site for supporting artists.

Oily Road Hideaway is the highest Flicker entry in this month’s chart and it falls four places from three to 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 left on his Fender and George panned to the right 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.

Dropping one place from last month‘s number eight is Farsight by Flicker. Farsight is a wonderful piece of music, progressive rock or indie jazz perhaps in style, highly melodic and decorated with samples from Captain Kirk’s USS Enterprise, Jonathan Agnew and Maharaj Ji, among others.

Farsight was originally an Ug Brothers creation that came about very late in that band’s existance, and didn’t make it to a live show before they folded in 1995. For the full backstory, we recommend the tune’s page at the Explicit Music website.

Welcome to the Family completes the September 2023 chart at number ten. 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.

Flicker‘s second album, HappySad, is under construction and you can listen to it as it stands right now by clicking here. Several more tracks are likely to be released in the coming weeks and months, so please keep an eye and an ear on our News service and Twitter.

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

Listening Options

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

September 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 September 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 that we shared 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 might 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.

We used to tweet just about every day. Since late 2021 things have become increasingly busy, meaning we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. Full tweeting days are now something of a rarity. When they happen, we try to do a clump of full days together over a period of a fortnight, if possible.

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 typically takes 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.

September 2023 begins an eighth year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 85 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 September 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!

At Least 1000 Words Remastered and Distributed Globally

At Least 1000 Words remastered and distributed globally? Really?!

Yes! Now that Flicker‘s album At Least 1000 Words has been remastered, it has been sent for global distribution.

Although you *can* download the album from some of the platforms, we strongly recommend downloading it from Bandcamp instead.

There are three compelling reasons.

Firstly, you will end up owning a higher quality file format of your choosing. Bandcamp offers downloads in MP3, V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV, and AIFF. It comes with all the free artwork you need to make your own CD, if you want to make one.

Secondly, you will pay less for the digital download at Bandcamp than other huge corporate providers.

Thirdly, not only will you pay less, a greater proportion of what you pay for the album will support the band directly. At Wud Records, we offer our artists massively more favourable terms than any big label we know of. Why not google the typical rates? Other search engines are available.

Big greedy corporations like to take huge markups from whatever they charge. For example, Amazon are charging $9.49 for an album of mp3s and they take around 30% of that.

At Bandcamp you can download At Least 1000 Words for €7, which is $7.48 at the time of publishing this news post. Bandcamp only take 15%. They take 0% of it if you happen to buy the album on Bandcamp Friday.

After the sales platform has taken its cut, the distrubtion company takes a percentage of what’s left. Then the label and the publisher take a percentage. The rest goes to the performers and composers, in other words, the band themselves.

When possible, please support your favourite artists through Bandcamp. Try to avoid enormous megacorporations that are only interested in money, rather than supporting amazing independent music.

At Least 1000 Words is now available for streaming on the following platforms. Simply click below to open the album in a new tab.

https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/album/at-least-1000-words
https://soundcloud.com/wud-records/sets/flicker-at-least-1000-words
https://open.spotify.com/album/14dLK23sFERjeVdINndF9X
https://listen.tidal.com/album/313844727
https://music.apple.com/us/album/at-least-1000-words/1705245867
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kUh9DWftZ3ubJ-6wZrrO31uMk4PMH2RRQ
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kUh9DWftZ3ubJ-6wZrrO31uMk4PMH2RRQ
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0CH1JDBZX
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH1H2JVN
https://www.deezer.com/en/album/483247375
https://www.boomplay.com/albums/76215821
https://web.napster.com/album/alb.3981693497924328

Flicker’s linktree has been updated with all of these streaming services. Check it out by clicking here!

If the album is not yet live on your favourite streaming service, it will probably come online in the coming days.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the listening party at Bandcamp on Saturday. We might hold further listening parties for other albums in the future.

And That’s Not All…

In other Flicker news, a little more progress has been made recently regarding some of the tracks that will be included on Flicker‘s HappySad album. They are Shooting Star, Wouldn’t You Know It, Little White Dress and Victim of Success. You can hear some very dodgy demos of the entire album by clicking here.

Flicker‘s second album, HappySad, is under construction and you can listen to it as it stands right now by clicking here. Several more tracks are likely to be released in the coming weeks and months, so please keep an eye and an ear on our News service and Twitter.

Dave and George will be reunited live, for the first time in over 20 years, at Flicker‘s listening party on Bandcamp, for the re-release of the band’s album At Least 1000 Words.

We’re very excited about this and can’t wait to see what will happen! We cordially invite all Flicker fans to attend.

The listening party takes place on Saturday 16th September at 19:30 CET, which is 18:30 uk time. If you live in a different timezone, you can calculate the time to arrive using a website like this one: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Apart from Emma’s flute and Lucy’s cello, Dave and George composed, played and produced everything else on the wonderful At Least 1000 Words album.

If there is anything you want to ask the two of them about the album, or if you’d just like to hang out with a couple of goofball musicians of enormous experience, talent and knowledge, while their remastered first album plays in the background, sign up at the RSVP link on the Bandcamp page just below and join the fun.

You can sign up by clicking right here: https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/at-least-1000-words-listening-party.

Dave and George have a long history of playing together over the last 40 years, including in our legacy bands Now, Sirius Rising, Wud, Laughing Sun, Alien Heat and The Ug Brothers, and our Archive bands Pyg and the Spacegoats. They always produced a special chemistry and synergy in their music that is seldom found in other musical partnerships.

They have both performed live on stage together countless times over the years, and this will be their first ever live chatroom. George mentioned that he might try to livestream himself on Twitch at the same time, although we cannot confirm whether or not this will happen.

The last time Dave and George actually made music together was in exeter in 2002, around the time George was finishing at university. Since then Dave has moved to the north coast of devon and George has left the uk entirely.

It is impossible to predict what will happen after this, although the magic the two of them intrinsically create together is undeniable. It will be fascinating to see and be a part of what transpires.

Flicker‘s second album, HappySad, is under construction. Much of it is well underway by now and we hope to finish more of its tracks before the end of this year. We shall of course inform Flicker fans of any such developments via our News service and on social media, such as X/Twitter, Mastodon and BlueSky.

To join the listening party, or download your very own copy of the remastered At Least 1000 Words album by Flicker, please click here.