News

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

How Did We Calculate The November 2022 Chart?

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. 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. There may be a news spoiler in that last sentence…

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

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

Only you, the listener, can influence our December 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! 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 November 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and other platforms.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. You genuinely help us keep the fires burning and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here seem worthwhile.

Who’s In The November 2022 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They enjpyed a particularly splendid month on the November 2022 chart, occupying four of the places. Three of their songs on the new chart come from their splendid Cosy Lube Turtle album. The other is from their Cherry Smoke Empire album.

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. We recently released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and sent it away to a distributor for global distribution. More news on this will follow soon.

Staying at number one on the new chart for a third month is Astronomy. This is a beautiful and haunting song composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.

The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is a little more produced in the opening bars than their live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.

Leaping back into the charts at number two 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 distribued them to the audience. Both the stage and the band were covered in them.

Standing still at number five is the third Cosy Lube Turtle song. This one is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Wings Wetted Down, from the 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album.

Wings Wetted Down is a masterfully crafted piece of songwriting, with its clever key changes and all its 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.

There is a fourth entry from 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. It tells the story of a dysfunctional family of fisherfolk from the Asturias region of 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.

Flicker

Flicker had a very strong month and achieved three entries on the new Wud Records chart. All three came from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Week Five is the highest Flicker tune on the new chart, reentering at number three. Week Five has a remarkably live-sounding feel for a studio recording. It is a breezy feel good latin rock dance number with summer vibes that wouldn’t sound out of place in a set from Carlos Santana.

Week Five is a piece about looking forward to the future and feeling excited about forthcoming adventures and new experiences. It begins with a sample from the Prague metro and as the tune builds it becomes progressively more intense.

Another reentry this month is Oily Road Hideaway at number six. 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 on his Fender and George 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.

Falling one place this month from number eight to nine comes 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.

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.

Dark Company

Another very good month for Dark Company sees them occupy all three of the remaining chart positions. Each song comes from a different album, with the work-in-progress Alien Heat album, Signmaker and Rage In Heaven all represented.

Climbing back up from number seven to number four 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. In Dancing In The Dark, Pete 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.

Sacrifice, the opening track on Dark Company‘s Rage in Heaven album, is a reentry at number seven on the new chart. Recently Sacrifice has also 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 Sacrifice has helped it appeal to fans from multiple musical subcultures over the years.

Reappearing at number ten, after a long time out of the chart, is Killer by Dark Company. If we were to run a top twenty, Killer would feature very often.

Killer remains a very popular song. It was the very first song that Dark Company finished recording, at the old Silent Running Studios in Exeter back in the summer of 1991. It has a hybrid reggae and rock vibe and is a song that Pete wrote for George, whose dilemma was to stay or go. He stayed.

The drums are provided by an old Boss DR220A drum machine and the song also features the wonderful tenor saxophone of Rowena Parsons. Killer is the opening track on Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker.

* None of our other acts made it onto the November 2022 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in November 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 less than a year behind in this work now, as some 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free Promo For Great Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How We Work It

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

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

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

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

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

November 2022 continues a seventh year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 76 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 November 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!

The Flicker logo at the Wud Records merch store is going to disappear very soon. That means if you want to own a warm hoodie, cool t-shirt, mouse pad, set of coasters, dog blanket and all manner of other things emblazoned with the flames of the Flicker logo, you had better be quick!

Here is a link to click that will take you directly to all 68 of the Flicker logo products at our third party merch store:

https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/117234876

There are 68 different products with this design available right now. In case you should be thinking of buying a new laptop bag, baseball cap, wall clock, notebook, or all manner of other items, why not buy one of ours? It will serve you well, look great and help us bring you some new music when we can upgrade the main studio monitors.

More Flicker news will be coming your way soon, so please make sure you are following Wud Records on Twitter as well as our News service pages here at the Wud Records website.

To visit the Flicker logo page at our merch store, please click here.

To stream a Flicker album whilst you are browsing, please click here and choose one from Bandcamp.

If you would like to check out all of the other designs available at the Wud Records merch store, please click here.

At the time of publishing, there is a special offer on stickers. If you happen to have some blank surfaces that need perking up, four are 25% off and ten are 50% off. These things don’t tend to last very long, so be fast!

At Least 1000 Words by Flicker is now on Discogs. It took a long time for the album to be reviewed, accepted and published, but it is finally there now.

As far as we are able to tell, all of the information is factually correct. We even found and added a few photos of those involved. Unfortunately there are a few people whose photos we were unable to include.

Discogs is a huge database of audio recordings and releases. All kinds of gnarly facts about performers, composers, producers, albums and other music-related trivia are there. It is also a marketplace for music where people can buy and sell their recordings, be they vinyl, cassette or other formats.

Now that At Least 1000 Words by Flicker has been successfully included, we shall endeavour to add further Wud Records releases to the Discogs catalogue over time. Any further developemnts will be announced in our News service and on Twitter.

Anybody can add to the Discogs database. If you are somebody who has created audio recordings and would like to add your musical information, you are free to do so. The process can be quite lengthy and complicated at first, but you will surely soon get the hang of it.

If you would like to read all of the details concerning At Least 1000 Words on Discogs, please click here.

If you would like to download or stream the album at Bandcamp, you can do so by clicking here.

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

How Did We Calculate The October 2022 Chart?

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. 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. There may be a news spoiler in that last sentence…

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

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

This latest chart could have looked very different. There was not very much gap between tracks five and twenty.

Only you, the listener, can influence our November 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! 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 October 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and other platforms.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. You genuinely help us keep the fires burning and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here seem worthwhile.

Who’s In The October 2022 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They can claim dominance over the October 2022 chart, occupying five of the top six places. All of their songs on the new chart come from their splendid Cosy Lube Turtle album.

Cosy Lube Turtle is an anagram. Can you solve it? It is a whole album of wonderful acoustic Blue Öyster Cult covers.

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. We recently released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and sent it away to a distributor for global distribution. More news on this will follow soon.

Staying at number one on the new chart for a second month is Astronomy. This is a beautiful and haunting song composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.

The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is a little more produced in the opening bars than their live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.

Climbing from number three last month to number two this month is Seven Screaming Diz-Busters. This is a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis.

Originally it was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performance by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

Dropping one place from number two to this month’s number three is She’s as Beautiful as a Foot. This 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 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.

Climbing one place from last month’s number six to this month’s number five is the fourth Cosy Lube Turtle song. This one is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Wings Wetted Down, from the 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album.

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

The final song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis this month is up from number ten to number six. This is The Subhuman, another wonderful Blue Oyster Cult song. It was originally released on the 1974 Secret Treaties album and there is a sublime live version on On Your Feet Or On Your Knees. The Bastard Sons of Dennis drew inpiration from both versions.

The Subhuman is seven minutes long and filled with beautifully crafted definitive guitar melodies. Live performances would be very similar, despite the length and the apparent jamminess of the piece. This is another song where Chuck tunes his low string to a drop-D.

Dark Company

An excellent month for Dark Company sees them occupy four of the remaining five chart positions. Two different albums are featured. There are three songs from the work-in-progress Alien Heat album and one from Signmaker.

A new entry at number four is Wonderlust, from the Alien Heat album. This song is currently work-in-progress and is one of Dark Company‘s heaviest. It was originally composed rather hastily in the garage at 490 Topsham Road, Exeter on 31st January 1990.

The guitar plays a harmony to Pete’s vocal during the verses. A jazz version of this song is also in the works.

Originally an Alien Heat composition, Wonderlust went somewhat better than expected when performed live. It has always tended to go overlooked, so it is very pleasing to see it being recognised. Wonderlust can be regarded as a Dark Company deep cut.

Dropping down from number four to number seven 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. In Dancing In The Dark, Pete 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.

Returning to the latest chart after an absence of seven years is Asylum Child. This is another song from Dark Company‘s work-in-progress Alien Heat album and is this month‘s number nine.

The band Alien Heat often referred to this song as “Assy Kid” due to Marc’s attempts at abbreviating the song titles for a list. Asylum Child was composed largely by Pete, Richard and Marc, with Graham and George adding their parts once the song had been structured.

Asylum Child is an extremely quirky song with brilliant lyrics, which you should definitely read by clicking here. Asylum Child has a variety of feels, from smooth FM rock to ska punk and a rare solitary profane word that is easy to miss.

There is another re-entry this month is at number ten. Astrologer is the second song from Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker. Astrologer is a wonderful song with elements of progressive rock and psychedelic jazz folk.

Astrologer features the youngest performer ever to feature on a Wud Records recording. Sammi was only 11 years old when she performed some of the flute parts. The rest of the flute and the saxophone was played by Rowena Parsons, and she did a wonderful job.

When Pete wrote the lyrics for Astrologer, he was on holiday in Bexhill-on-Sea with his wife and daughter and sent a postcard to George to let him know of its manifestation. George says he had the idea for the music after hearing a James Bond theme tune.

Flicker

Flicker achieved a single entry on the new Wud Records chart. It came from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Climbing one place this month from number nine to number eight comes 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.

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 October 2022 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in October 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 less than a year behind in this work now, as some 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.

October 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 October 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 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.

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.

October 2022 continues a seventh year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 75 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 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!