News

Critical Error: three bonus tracks

Posted by Wudmaster on 03/06/22

Three bonus tracks have been added to Critical Error‘s Eponymous album from 1987. The three songs in question are Scratch the Image, Cry Like a Wolf and Wild.

We decided, after some deliberation along with Critical Error, to add them onto the end of the Eponymous album rather than make a new EP.

The release of these exclusive recordings is fabulous news for fans of Critical Error as these songs are not available anywhere else.

It’s true that the sound quality isn’t great. The audio came from cassettes that were over 30 years old. We did as much as we could to enhance it.

The important thing here is that the performances are simply wonderful, captivating audio photographs from another time. Rosie’s singing is especially fabulous. We hope you will enjoy hearing these songs as much as we did!

Wild is especially exclusive. It was the very last song that Critical Error ever wrote together. It was only ever performed live once, at the Black Horse in Exeter in the summer of 1995. This recording is therefore a bootleg of that one and only performance.

The three bonus tracks all feature the classic Critical Error lineup of Rosie Mullin on voice, Steve Mavin on voice and guitar, Aidan Whiteley on guitar and Allan Veal on bass.

Stuart “The Amazing Blind Screaming Blue Stu” Cannon joins the quartet on harmonica for Scratch the Image. Stuart was a wandering free-spirited harmonica player who would often step up and join a band for a song or two. He became a regular feature with our legacy band Rough Terrain and their black-humoured song Coping With The Runs In Mexico Blues.

If you would like to listen to Critical Error’s Eponymous album, complete with the three bonus tracks, right here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

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

If you would like to own your very own digital copy of this fabulous and historic album, including its three bonus tracks, you can download it from Bandcamp by clicking here.

Please note that Wud Records is not responsible for Critical Error’s Bandcamp pages.

Wud Records: May 2022 top ten tracks published at SoundCloud

Posted by Wudmaster on 02/06/22

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for May 2022 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist.

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays.

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!

Songs published at Bandcamp and other platforms are omitted from the SoundCloud statistics because they would require separate treatment.

Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored, as are likes and comments from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

Only you, the listener, can influence our June 2022 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!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during May 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, as well as other platforms.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated because they genuinely help us keep the fires burning. 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.

Congratulations to Flicker! Flicker enjoyed a good month on the new chart, occupying three of the positions. All of the Flicker tracks are from their wonderful 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Remaining at the very top of our chart is Oily Road Hideaway, a delightful 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 on his Fender and George on the Plank.

Another Star in the Sky is the second Flicker track to appear on the May 2022 chart. Another Star in the Sky is a beautiful wistful bluesy jazzy rock instrumental which features Lucy Welsman on cello. This one has been in and out of the top ten since we first joined SoundCloud and falls two spots this month to number five.

Welcome to the Family drops one place on the new chart from eight to nine and is the third Flicker tune to find representation. This is another 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.

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.

There are five songs in total by Dark Company, who enjoyed another splendid month for Wud Records on SoundCloud during May 2022. Four different Dark Company albums all find representation, with one song each from Signmaker, Can of Worms and Old Hands, and two from Rage in Heaven.

Spiritual Remission from the album Can of Worms remains at number two for a second month. It features Pete’s wonderfully languid vocals and lyrics that reference literature and legend as well as personal experiences.

Recently Spiritual Remission has been enhanced with new bass and drums and the wonderful melodica playing of Olly Joseph. We are hoping to be able to include Olly’s talents in a few more songs in the future. You can listen to Olly’s fabulous compositions at his SoundCloud page by clicking here.

Please remember to follow our News service and Twitter for further announcements regarding the forthcoming upgrades to the Can of Worms album.

Sacrifice, the opening track on Dark Company‘s Rage in Heaven album, is a re-entry at number four on the new chart. Recently Sacrifice has enjoyed radio play on a number of stations. This is probably a contributary factor in its resurgent streaming popularity. Sacrifice is an alluring and curious mix of progressive rock, trance and rap. The genre-bending nature of the song has helped it appeal to fans from multiple musical subcultures over the years.

Probably also due to an outbreak of recent radio play, Medicines is in our charts yet again, this time down from four to number six. Medicines has been our biggest selling song over the years and people still seek it out and enjoy listening to it.

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

Down one place from last month‘s number six to the new number seven is Crash, from Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker. Crash is a high octane esoteric mix of hard rock and jazz funk. It has been likened to Talking Heads, Van Halen, AC/DC, ZZ Top and The Who amongst others.

Crash was originally an Alien Heat song, and Alien Heat used it to open their live show. Sadly, no recording of the Alien Heat version still exists, as far as we know.

There is also a different work-in-progress version of Crash on Dark Company‘s forthcoming Alien Heat album and a wonderful remix featuring lots of voice samples from an omnibus edition of EastEnders, broadcast on BBC television in late 1991.

A new entry at number ten is Dangerous, the fifth track on the May 2022 chart from Dark Company. This is at present still a demo version. Dangerous is a very interesting and wonderful song in its own right. We love the curious lyrics and the beautiful guitar and bass parts. It will be a great day when we can finally finish and release the Old Hands album!

One of the two remaining tracks on the May 2022 chart comes from The Ug Brothers. It’s an ugstrumental bootleg of Fang, up from last month‘s number seven to number three.

Fang was a perennial live rocking favourite. It has a quick tempo and rather bleak lyrics about sleep vampires. Sleep vampires, we are told, are people who steal your sleep. They can sleep soundly in the same bed or the same room, or a neighbouring room, while you toss and turn and are unable to find peace of mind or comfort of body for the whole night long.

Although this rendition of Fang is a lofi instrumental jam salvaged from cassette, there is another version by Doctor Watson with vocals, which you can enjoy by clicking here.

The only other act to be represented in our chart this month are The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Their wonderful epic song The Furniture / Los Muebles is an extraordinary tale, which threads its way through the entirety of the duo’s Cherry Smoke Empire album. This song tells the story of a dysfunctional family of fisherfolk from northern Spain, who lost and then found some of their furniture following a flood. The Furniture (part one: overture) has charted many times and reenters at number eight.

None of our other acts made it onto the chart this month.

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in May 2022, 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.

Recently we have added a few more of the previous charts as pages to their section of this website. We are still more than a year behind in this work, but at least a little catching up has been done. If you’d like to see all our old charts, they can be accessed easily by clicking here. More pages will be added soon, when there is time.

Wud Records: May 2022 Musical Discoveries

Posted by Wudmaster on 01/06/22

May 2022 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 May 2022 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 2022 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 featured artists and tracks. 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.

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.

We also use Twitter to 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 week, although since late last year things have become very busy and we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. That may change in the future.

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

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.

Listen and Enjoy

If you would like to listen to the new playlist of May 2022 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!

Wud Records: April 2022 top ten tracks published at SoundCloud

Posted by Wudmaster on 02/05/22

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for April 2022 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist.

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays.

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!

Songs published at Bandcamp and other platforms are omitted from the SoundCloud statistics because they would require separate treatment.

Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored, as are likes and comments from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

Only you, the listener, can influence our May 2022 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!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during April 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, as well as other platforms.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated because they genuinely help us keep the fires burning. 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.

Congratulations to Flicker! Flicker enjoyed a good month on the new chart, occupying three of the positions. All of the Flicker tracks are from their wonderful 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Remaining at the very top of our chart is Oily Road Hideaway, a delightful 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 on his Fender and George on the Plank.

Another Star in the Sky is the second Flicker track to appear on the April 2022 chart. Another Star in the Sky is a beautiful wistful bluesy jazzy rock instrumental which features Lucy Welsman on cello. This one has been in and out of the top ten since we first joined SoundCloud and re-enters this month at number three.

Welcome to the Family climbs one place on the new chart from nine to eight and is the third Flicker tune to find representation. This is another 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.

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.

There are four songs in total by Dark Company, who enjoyed another splendid month for Wud Records on SoundCloud during April 2022. The band’s first four albums all find representation, with one song each from Signmaker, Rage in Heaven, Alien Heat and Can of Worms.

Spiritual Remission from the album Can of Worms climbs two places from last month‘s number four to this month’s number two. It features Pete’s wonderfully languid vocals and lyrics that reference literature and legend as well as personal experiences.

Recently Spiritual Remission has been enhanced with new bass and drums and the wonderful melodica playing of Olly Joseph. We are hoping to be able to include Olly’s talents in a few more songs in the future. You can listen to Olly’s fabulous compositions at his SoundClloud page by clicking here.

Please remember to follow our News service and Twitter for further announcements regarding the forthcoming upgrades to the Can of Worms album.

Probably due to an outbreak of recent radio play, Medicines is climbing our charts yet again, this time up from six to number four. Medicines has been our biggest selling song over the years and people still seek it out and enjoy listening to it.

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

Down four places from last month‘s number two to number six is Crash, from Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker. Crash is a high octane esoteric mix of hard rock and jazz funk. It has been likened to Talking Heads, Van Halen, AC/DC, ZZ Top and The Who amongst others.

Crash was originally an Alien Heat song, and Alien Heat used it to open their live show. Sadly, no recording of the Alien Heat version still exists, as far as we know.

There is also a different work-in-progress version of Crash on Dark Company‘s forthcoming Alien Heat album and a wonderful remix featuring lots of voice samples from an omnibus edition of EastEnders, broadcast on BBC television in late 1991.

Down to number ten this month is Dark Company’s awesome alternative / hard / psychedelic rock and funk song Dancing In The Dark. The version you can hear is still work-in-progress.

Pete wrote the lyrics in 1989 and the song was originally performed by Alien Heat. Dancing In The Dark describes his memories of going nightclubbing in the West End of London after being revved up by his good friend Billy.

Pete was not actually terribly keen on the song and would always refer to it as “Farting in the Park”.

Back in the days of Alien Heat, Dancing In The Dark included Graham’s drum solo. This was when everyone in the band would roll a cigarette (or something a little more flavoursome) while he performed it, hopefully having the deed done and the object lit in time to carry on with the song at the drum solo’s conclusion.

Two of the remaining songs on the April 2022 chart come from The Ug Brothers. Spin Gone Crazy is a gloriously rifftastic rocky cruise, driven by the bass and drums. Dave wrote the lyrics that describe his thoughts and feelings when driving a powerful motorcycle. The opening riif was one that George had been kicking around for a few years, before the rest of the music came one day at Ug Brothers HQ in the centre of Exeter.

The other is an ugstrumental bootleg of Fang, a new entry at number seven and a perrenial live rock favourite with a quick tempo and rather bleak lyrics about sleep vampires. Sleep vampires, we are told, are people who steal your sleep. They can sleep soundly while you toss and turn and are unable to find peace of mind or comfort of body.

Although this rendition of Fang is a lofi instrumental jam salvaged from cassette, there is another version by Doctor Watson with vocals, which you can enjoy by clicking here.

Alchemeon are the final act to find representation in our chart this month. Their ever-popular song The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth) pops back into the charts at number nine. The Freaks was a previous number one song and it would be no surprise if it were to reach the pinnacle of the Wud Records SoundCloud Charts again some day.

None of our other acts made it onto the chart this month.

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in April 2022, 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.

Recently we have added a few more of the previous charts as pages to their section of this website. We are still nearly two years behind in this work, but at least a little catching up has been done. If you’d like to see all our old charts, they can be accessed easily by clicking here. More pages will be added soon, when there is time.

Wud Records: April 2022 Musical Discoveries

Posted by Wudmaster on 01/05/22

April 2022 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 2022 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 2022 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 featured artists and tracks. 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.

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.

We also use Twitter to 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 week, although since late last year things have become very busy and we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. That may change in the future.

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

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.

Listen and Enjoy

If you would like to listen to the new playlist of April 2022 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!

Wud Records: March 2022 top ten tracks published at SoundCloud

Posted by Wudmaster on 02/04/22

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for March 2022 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist.

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays.

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!

Songs published at Bandcamp and other platforms are omitted from the SoundCloud statistics because they would require separate treatment.

Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored, as are likes and comments from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

Only you, the listener, can influence our April 2022 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!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during March 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, as well as other platforms.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated because they genuinely help us keep the fires burning. 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.

Congratulations to Flicker! Flicker enjoyed a very good month on the new chart, occupying four of the positions. All of the Flicker tracks are from their wonderful 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Remaining at the very top of our chart is Oily Road Hideaway, a delightful 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 on his Fender and George on the Plank.

Beautiful Wings and Blown Away both return to the top ten this month. These are consistently two highly popular Flicker instrumentals. They have both appeared in the top ten frequently, and are usually not too far below the chart positions during months when other music from Wud Records is more prevalent.

Beautiful Wings has a wistful folk rock or world music feel. Its source is an acoustic guitar tuned to DADFCE.

Blown Away has a harder edge and is more classic, fusion or indie rock in style.

Welcome to the Family drops five places on the new chart from four to nine. This is another 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.

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.

There are five songs in total by Dark Company, who enjoyed another splendid month for Wud Records on SoundCloud during March 2022. The band’s first four albums all find representation, with one song each from Signmaker, Rage in Heaven and Alien Heat, and two from Can of Worms.

Up one place from last month‘s number three is Crash, from Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker. Crash is a high octane esoteric mix of hard rock and jazz funk. It has been likened to Talking Heads, Van Halen, AC/DC, ZZ Top and The Who amongst others.

Crash was originally an Alien Heat song, and Alien Heat used it to open their live show. Sadly, no recording of the Alien Heat version still exists, as far as we know.

There is also a different work-in-progress version of Crash on Dark Company‘s forthcoming Alien Heat album and a wonderful remix featuring lots of voice samples from an omnibus edition of EastEnders, broadcast on BBC television in late 1991.

Staying at number eight again this month is Dark Company’s awesome alternative / hard / psychedelic rock and funk song Dancing In The Dark. The version you can hear is still work-in-progress.

Pete wrote the lyrics in 1989 and the song was originally performed by Alien Heat. Dancing In The Dark describes his memories of going nightclubbing in the West End of London after being revved up by his good friend Billy.

Pete was not actually terribly keen on the song and would always refer to it as “Farting in the Park”.

Back in the days of Alien Heat, Dancing In The Dark included Graham’s drum solo. This was when everyone in the band would roll a cigarette (or something a little more flavoursome) while he performed it, hopefully having the deed done and the object lit in time to carry on with the song at the drum solo’s conclusion.

Spiritual Remission from the album Can of Worms is a new entry at number four. We are at present working on an upgrade for this song. It features Pete’s wonderfully languid vocals and lyrics that reference literature and legend as well as personal experiences. Please remember to follow our News service and Twitter for further announcements regarding the forthcoming upgrades to the Can of Worms album.

Medicines is back on our charts yet again, this time at number six. Medicines has been our biggest selling song over the years and people still seek it out and enjoy listening to it. It was popular in Europe rather than in the uk where Dark Company formed. Mainstream radio in the uk didn’t want to play it as the intro was “too long” and the lyrics “too difficult to understand”. They are about a subject other than procreation, the only subject a dumbed down mainstream audience seems capable of understanding, according to the purveyors of mainstream media themselves.

Down eight places, to this month‘s number ten position, is Horizontal Hold, a very wonderful song that is still work-in-progress. This version is from Dark Company‘s forthcoming fourth album, Can of Worms. It features the thought- and smile-provoking lyrics of Speedy Pete Greatorex. Horizontal Hold (as in “please do not adjust your set”) was later reworked on the subsequent Mind Dance album – with guitars – as Broken Tubes.

The remaining song on the March 2022 chart comes from The Ug Brothers. Spin Gone Crazy is a gloriously rifftastic rocky cruise, driven by the bass and drums. Dave wrote the lyrics that describe his thoughts and feelings when driving a powerful motorcycle. The opening riif was one that George had been kicking around for a few years, before the rest of the music came one day at Ug Brothers HQ in the centre of Exeter.

None of our other acts made it onto the chart this month.

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in March 2022, 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.

Recently we have added a few more of the previous charts as pages to their section of this website. We are still nearly two years behind in this work, but at least a little catching up has been done. If you’d like to see all our old charts, they can be accessed easily by clicking here. More pages will be added soon, when there is time.