News

20 Most Played Tracks of 2021

We thought it might be fun to make two playlists of the 20 most played tracks of 2021, one each for SoundCloud and Bandcamp. We felt that such playlists would enable fans of our bands to hear what has been hot and to have the opportunity to enjoy listening to some of our most popular tracks of recent times.

SoundCloud
Wud Records had a very good year on SoundCloud. Activity was very slightly below what it was in 2020, and more than double what it was in both 2019 and 2018. We finished the year with over 3200 followers. It is very pleasing that more new fans across the world are discovering and enjoying the great music made by our amazing artists.

Making a SoundCloud playlist of the tracks that were popular there is easily done. To listen to the 20 Most Played Tracks of 2021 playlist at the SoundCloud website, simply click here to open that page in a new tab.

The 20 Most Played Tracks of 2021 were dominated by four acts. Dark Company and Flicker both achieved seven of the top twenty songs, Alchemeon four, and The Bastard Sons of Dennis took the other two. That result means the three active bands we have on SoundCloud are all represented, as is the most recently retired legacy act.

It is little surprise that Dancing in the Dark by Dark Company should be the top track of the year on SoundCloud. It spent six months on the top of our monthly charts and is still receiving enough love and streams to keep it in the top ten. We have been working on finalisng the Alien Heat album, from which it comes, and hope to release it this year.

Songs from various other Dark Comopany albums were popular in 2021. The other albums with tracks in the top 20 are Can of Worms, Rage in Heaven, Noir, Mind Dance and Old Hands. All apart from Rage In Heaven are work in progress that we aim to complete as soon as we are able.

Medicines from the album Rage in Heaven has been our most played song over the years. It may not have appeared on many of the charts in 2021, but like various other tracks it was consistently just outside. Fans continue to remember it, search for it and enjoy listening to it.

All seven of the Flicker tracks are the wonderful instrumentals from their much-loved album At Least 1000 Words. We are working on more tracks for Flicker’s second album, HappySad, and hope to bring some of them to you before long.

The four wonderful Alchemeon songs include previous chart toppers The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth) and Castrol GTX a-Go-Go. They are both from Alchemeon’s Live In Session Spring 2009 album, along with Orb. The space rock epic Born Of Stars comes from their live Winter recording.

The two remaining places were taken by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. The Furniture / Los Muebles is a comedy alternative folk flamenco epic. It is split into several parts and alternates with other songs throughout the entire Cherry Smoke Empire album. It is Part One (Overture) that features in the 20 Most Played Tracks of 2021, along with their wonderful acoustic funk and progressive rock song Good Times.

The whole uninterrupted version of The Furniture / Los Muebles is also available for download from Bandcamp by clicking here.

It is worth noting that these are only the most streamed tracks at SoundCloud, rather than the most popular. The total amounts of likes, reposts and comments have been ignored. Taking these other factors into consideration would inevitably yield different results.

Top 20 SoundCloud Tracks 2021

1. Dark Company – Dancing in the Dark
2. Alchemeon – The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth)
3. Flicker – Oily Road Hideaway
4. Flicker – Welcome to the Family
5. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – The Furniture (part 1: overture)
6. Flicker – Blown Away
7. Dark Company – Horizontal Hold
8. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Good Times
9. Flicker – Farsight
10. Flicker – Beautiful Wings
11. Alchemeon – Born of Stars
12. Dark Company – Medicines
13. Dark Company – Cable Guy
14. Alchemeon – Orb
15. Flicker – Moonpath
16. Dark Company – Humpty Dumpty
17. Dark Company – Slave of Days
18. Dark Company – Failsafe
19. Alchemeon – Castrol GTX a-Go-Go
20. Flicker – Serendipity

Bandcamp
It’s been a reasonable year for Wud Records on Bandcamp. January was a fantastic month, and then things became quieter until we announced Dark Company’s 30th Anniversary, which caused a spike in sales again.

Bandcamp is the platform with the best ethos in the business. If you are not a member yet, it’s time to join.

One of the great features of Bandcamp is its Communities. You can join ours by clicking here. ;-)

In 2021, both our streams and sales were down slightly overall compared to 2020. The best-selling album was Flicker‘s At Least 1000 Words, and the best selling individual track was Minack from Flicker‘s work-in-progress HappySad album.

The 2021 chart sees a good spread of different artists with no one act claiming domination for the year’s Bandcamp streams.

Over at Bandcamp it is not so easy to make a simple playlist of our popular tracks. Instead, what we have done is created some sort of playlist here, within this very news post, for your listening pleasure. Simply clicking on the links below will allow you to play the various tracks.

Top 20 Bandcamp Tracks 2021

1. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Seven Screaming Diz-Bisters
2. Flicker – Farsight
3. Flicker – Minack
4. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Dominance and Submission
5. Flicker – It Starts Right Here
6. Dark Company – Medicines
7. The Ug Brothers – White Water
8. Mark Drower and the Everyones – The Mirror
9. Alchemeon – Born
10. Pok the Bard – Whatever You Are, Whatever You Do
11. Dark Company – Sacrifice
12. Pok the Bard – Cordelia Dreams
13. Dark Company – Astrologer
14. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – The Subhuman
15. Dark Company – Future Sadness Past
16. Dark Company – Killer
17. Mark Drower and the Everyones – I Know I Know You
18. Dark Company – Animal House
19. Alien Heat – Jigsaw
20. Flicker – The Percolator

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2021 against the figures for 2020, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2021 against the figures for 2019, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2021 against the figures for 2018, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2021 against the figures for 2017, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for December 2021 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 December 2021 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 December 2021 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 Dark Company! Straight back in with a bang this month on our chart 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 AC/DC, ZZ Top and The Who amongst others. It 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.

There are six songs in total by Dark Company, who enjoyed a highly dominant month for Wud Records on SoundCloud during December 2021.

Down two places this month from the top of our chart last month is Slave of Days. Like all its bedfellows on Dark Company‘s Mind Dance album, Slave of Days is work-in-progress. It’s a simple and joyful slab of punk rock, or hard rock maybe, with a fun shout-along chorus hook line.

Also down two places, to this month’s number four 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 and was reworked on the subsequent Mind Dance album with guitars as Broken Tubes.

Damaged, from the Dark Company album Benign Inquisition, is down two positions on the newest chart at number six. Damaged is a truly beautiful song with a wonderful melody and some of Pete’s finest whimsical and storytelling lyrics. Pete rarely did whimsical. Do have a listen, it’s a real gem.

Like the rest of the Benign Inquisition album, Damaged is still very much work-in-progress. It has recently had something of an upgrade with the addition of some wonderful cello from the marvelous Alison Reynolds. Alison has been helping us out with some cello lines recently in between her own projects, which we highly recommend you listen to as well.

To visit Alison’s website, please click here.

Returning to Wud Records charts at number eight in December 2021 is Venturi, another song from the work-in-progress Mind Dance album. We’ve always loved the lyrics for Venturi. It still needs a fair bit of work to finish it off and we hope to do so sometime soon.

Slipping down to number nine 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.

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

Yoyoing back up to number two this month from number nine last month for Flicker 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.

Welcome to the Family moves down the new chart from three to seven. This is another 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 the keyboard parts most admirably.

Back into the top ten, at number ten, comes Farsight by Flicker. This one has been just below the top ten for the past few months and it is no great surprise to see its return. 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.

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.

The remaining song on the December 2021 chart comes from Alchemeon. The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth) was a chart topper earlier in 2021 and rises from number eight to five.

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 December 2021, 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 three 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.

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 December 2021 into one agreed playlist and published it on the first day of the new month.

This December 2021 playlist is the 65th musical discoveries compilation. It represents over five years of amazing music and a remarkable voyage of listening enjoyment.

There are over 2000 wonderful independent artists and more than 250 hours of independent music to listen to. We hope you find some new favourites among them as we have. These compilations represent some of the very best music we’ve heard in the last five years.

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 2021 not many have the time, patience or attention span to listen to even one track all the way through, let alone all 34! 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 do 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.

This is 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.

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 encourage people to vote for the next featured track on Twitter. 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 generally try to have a full tweeting day at least three days each week, although in recent times things have become very busy and we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to.

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

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:
1. you have original music and
2. 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!

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, so please be patient and eventually you will be heard.

If you would like to listen to the new playlist of December 2021 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!

Happy New Ear 2022! \,,/(^_^)\,,/

It is with great pleasure that we wish everybody a very Happy New Year in 2022! Let’s hope it’s a memorable one for all the right reasons.

The whole team would like to say a massive thank you to everybody who supported us in 2021. Without you, we couldn’t do this. We are very grateful and humbled by the support we have had from every corner of the earth. You lovely people continue to amaze us and make us smile.

In 2021 Covid continued to ravage the planet and cause untold disruption and misery to millions. We were very lucky in 2021, with very few of the wider Wud family being afflicted with the dreaded lurgulation. In 2020 we lost four dear souls to covid. May they rest in peace.

Musically, 2021 was a rather quiet year for Wud Records. We only managed to release one track, Seven Screaming Dizbusters by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. The best part was that its release finally completed the Cosy Lube Turtle album.

Dark Company celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2021. A lot of work was done to upgrade Dark Company‘s forthcoming Alien Heat album. All 16 tracks received a makeover. They are not finished but we are generally very pleased with how most of them are coming along.

The album is largely waiting on guitar parts, which need a very old amplifier to be repaired by a specialist. He is rarely available due to logistical difficulties caused by covid and distance. The situation is complicated further by the fact that we don’t trust a courier service to care for this delicate equipment.

One of the most exciting developments in 2021 was the addition of two session musicians to our bands’ recoridngs.

Richard Davies played some beautiful tenor sax for Dark Company on their songs Jigsaw, Bodyfire and Traveller.

Alison Reynolds provided us with some amazing cello for Dark Company‘s Damaged and Sinner, the latter of which we are still processing.

We sincerely hope there will be more to come from both of them in 2022, with a few tracks by both Flicker and Dark Company slated for session tenor sax and cello.

In addition, we plan to seek out the services of more session players for a handful of recordings which are not covered by our team.

Also in 2021, a new band was added to the Archives – the wonderful Demon Groove Lizards. More of their music will be added soon.

There was more added to the Archives from the Critical Error family of bands too, wth the addition of the Fruit Bats and some other Critical Error material.

Of our legacy bands, Lemming Merngue, Now and Mark Drower and the Everyones received new articles and memoirs from different contributors. Fascinating reading and beautifully written! There may be more memories added to the Mark Drower and the Everyones pages in 2022 if things go well.

A few new album covers were created for old albums. Recluse, Stephen Yates and Demon Grrove Lizards from the Archives all benefitted from new album artwork, as did our legacy band The Subterraineans. There were photo galleries added for Pok the Bard and our Archive band The Chillun as well.

Our publishing partner, Explicit Music, gave The Bastard Sons of Dennis a major upgrade to their Cherry Smoke Empire pages.

Although we have not had as much time to spend on social media in 2021, we have enjoyed a great year on Twitter and a good one on Instagram as well. We hope to be back for more there in 2022.

On SoundCloud, our overall streams were marginally down on 2020 but still good overall.

Over at Bandcamp the year began very strongly but then faded a little for the remainder, apart from a spike in sales when we announced Dark Company’s 30th Anniversary offer.

Looking ahead, we are very hopeful of releasing more than just one track in 2022! We hope there will be fewer disruptions and more time for music in the coming months. We shall of course be making all such announcements in our News service and on Twitter.

What are you planning to achieve in 2022? Whatever it may be, we wish you success beyond your wildest dreams and a very Happy New Ear!

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for November 2021 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 December 2021 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 November 2021 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 Dark Company! New this month at the top of our chart is Slave of Days. Like all its bedfellows on Dark Company‘s Mind Dance album, Slave of Days is work-in-progress. It’s a simple and joyful slab of punk rock, or hard rock maybe, with a fun shout-along chorus hook line.

There are five songs in total by Dark Company, who enjoyed a dominant month for Wud Records on SoundCloud during November 2021.

Down one place to this month’s number two 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 and was reworked on the subsequent Mind Dance album with guitars as Broken Tubes.

Damaged, from the Dark Company album Benign Inquisition, arrives on the newest chart at number four. Damaged is a truly beautiful song with a wonderful melody and some of Pete’s finest whimsical and storytelling lyrics. Pete rarely did whimsical. Do have a listen, it’s a real gem.

Like the rest of the Benign Inquisition album, Damaged is still very much work-in-progress. It has recently had something of an upgrade with the addition of some wonderful cello from the marvelous Alison Reynolds. Alison has been helping us out with some cello lines recently in between her own projects, which we highly recommend you listen to as well.

To visit Alison’s website, please click here.

Slipping down to number five 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.

The other Dark Company song to be featured in the November 2021 chart is Deadwood, making its first appearance in our charts. Deadwood is a curious song, a piece of folk rock as it were. Pete once said that he could never be sure if it was brilliant or terrible and the way he felt about it would change from one extreme to the other on a regular basis. Deadwood is work-in-progress, little more than a demo in reality, and comes from the forthcoming Dark Company album Benign Inquisition.

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

Welcome to the Family moves up the new chart from five to three. This is a latin-jazz-rock-fusion track that 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 the keyboard parts most admirably.

Beautiful Wings remains in the charts again, at the number six position down from number four. Beautiful Wings is a splendid melodic folk rock or world music instrumental. It has been a tremendously popular piece of music and showcases the wonderful virtuoso multi-instrumental musical skills of the band.

The final Flicker track to appear on the new chart is Oily Road Hideaway, another 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.

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.

The two remaining songs on the November 2021 chart come from Alchemeon and The Bastard Sons of Dennis respectively. The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth) by Alchemeon was a chart topper earlier in the year and is a re-rentry this month, as is Good Times by The Bastard Sons of Dennis.

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 November 2021, 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 three 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.

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 November 2021 into one agreed playlist and published it on the first day of the new month.

This November 2021 playlist is the 64th musical discoveries compilation. It represents over five years of amazing music and a remarkable voyage of listening enjoyment.

There are over 2000 wonderful independent artists and more than 250 hours of independent music to listen to. We hope you find some new favourites among them as we have. These compilations represent some of the very best music we’ve heard in the last five years.

Tracks have been arranged according to the number of plays at the exact moment 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 2021 not many have the time, patience or attention span to listen to even one track all the way through, let alone 45! 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 do listen to a whole playlist, so if you want a bit of free promotion…

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.

This is 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.

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 encourage people to vote for the next featured track on Twitter. 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 generally try to have a full tweeting day at least three days each week.

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

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:
1. you have original music and
2. 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!

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, so please be patient and eventually you will be heard.

If you would like to listen to the new playlist of November 2021 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!