News

Four more Alien Heat songs upgraded for the coming album by Dark Company? Really? Is it true?

Yes, it is! Ship to Shore, Asylum Child, Jigsaw and Crash have all had something of a sonic makeover. They are sounding far more fabulous than they were before.

We are attempting to finish as much of the work as we can on this album before the guitars and basses are properly recorded. We are waiting on a good day to visit the repair specialists and then the guitars will be recorded and the album mixed and mastered fairly soon after. At least, that’s the plan.

As a general rule, we’ve been mixing the Alien Heat album with the guitar mostly panned towards the left and the keyboards mostly panned towards the right, just as if the listener were looking at the band on stage. There are tons of tiny details in every track and we are doing what we can to make sure nothing goes missing or is buried.

The four Alien Heat songs still need in need of an upgrade are Alpha Omega, Wonderlust, Bodyfire and Mister Dream. They are curently in pieces in our workshop and with a bit of luck will be sorted in the next few weeks. We shall of course let Dark Company fans know when the remaining Alien Heat songs have been upgraded via our News service and on Twitter.

Ship to Shore has for a long time been a real favourite among the wider Wud posse. We managed to salvage a little of Zaphod’s ‘noise’ from the start of the Alien Heat version (“Cue the noise!”) and added a few sounds using the EDP Wasp.

A couple of extra percussive things make the rhythm part a little closer to Graham’s original drum part. The other sounds were thinned out a little. They are all still present, they just don’t occur as frequently as before to make space for each other. The overall mix is still quite wonky but it’s a lot better.

Asylum Child is a lyrical masterpiece from the pen of Professor Greatorex and oddly prophetic. It also contains a bad word, which is very rare for Dark Company. It might even be unique in this regard. A radio-friendly version of Asylum Child will be released as an extra when the time comes, probably as a B-side.

Jigsaw required a fair amount of prodding and poking and we are fairly happy with where it is now. A lot of extra sounds that seemed important proved to be very hard to find. In the end it was easier to recreate many of them using the EDP Wasp. What a splendid tool that old machine is.

We also studied Graham’s original drum parts and tweaked the sequencer a little. Real saxophone from an actual human saxophonist is on its way, which is tremendous news.

Jigsaw is somewhat changed from the original version. We loved Marc’s original bass part and Jeff’s bass part as well. When Jeff joined Dark Company he devised his own basslines. Dave’s original was switched to the sax, which was the line that Rowena played back in the early days of Dark Company.

Maxx does a splendid job of approximating Jeff’s playing. Jigsaw is slated to be released as a single.

Crash is probably the track we are least happy with. Crash was the first song that Jeff played on for Dark Company, starting way back on the very first day we met him. For this version of Crash, Jeff created most of the sequencer rhythm track.

As far as we know, there is no recording of Alien Heat playing Crash anywhere in existence. Exactly how Graham’s original drum parts went we cannot be sure. It’s one of those where you simply have to accept that it is quite different from the original. Proper guitar and bass still to come, and probably more tweakings.

Please bear in mind that all 16 of these songs are still work-in-progress.

You can listen to the entire Alien Heat album by Dark Company, as it stand right now, at SoundCloud by clicking here.

To listen to it here at the Wud Records website, please click here instead.

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for July 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 August 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!

Our tracks received more streams overall in July 2021 than any of the previous eleven months. Awesome!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during July 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! It has been an extremely good month for Dark Company over at SoundCloud. They claimed no less than five of the top ten places.

Remaining at the top of our charts for a fifth consecutive month is their 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.

There has already been, and will also be, further news published regarding upgrades to other songs from Dark Company’s Alien Heat album in the coming days. We are busy fixing these in the hope of being able to repair broken gear and finish the guitars fairly soon.

Reentering the chart at number three is arguably Dark Company‘s oddest song, Seeing, We Should. Pete said that the name came from thinking “Hmm, seeing. Yes. That’s a good idea. We should really do that.”

Seeing, We Should is completely arhythmic. Most of the sounds were created by Pete on his ancient Korg analog synth and then arranged once an interesting collection had been established. No matter what, we have never been able to recreate the magic of the original version of this weird song.

It is the last track on Dark Company‘s Benign Inquisition. Seeing, We Should is somewhat dark and creepy. The band had a break for several years after the Benign Inquisition album was written.

A second recently upgraded Dark Company song from their work-in-progress Alien Heat album reentered the July 2021 chart at number six. Ship to Shore has long been a collective favourite of the wider Wud posse, ever since its first creation back in Alien Heat days. Ship to Shore is a fabulous allegorical piece of progressive rock and we are looking forward very much to having it finished.

The other two Dark Company songs to feature in the new chart are Change the Light from the Noir album at number seven, and Humpty Dumpty from Mind Dance at number nine. Dark Company are extremely genre-fluid. Their five songs in the July 2021 chart are all quite different to each other.

Flicker‘s sole representation on the new chart is Oily Road Hideaway from their wonderful 2002 album At Least 1000 Words. Oily Road Hideaway is the only track from Flicker‘s first album with programmed drums. It remains at number two.

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.

Also appearing on this month’s chart we see the first two tracks from the delightful Cherry Smoke Empire album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Good Times climbs two places from last month‘s number seven to this month‘s number five. The Furniture / Los Muebles (part 1: overture) ascends one place from five to four.

There are two remaining songs in the July 2021 Top Ten Tracks to mention. They are very different to each other.

The Mirror by Mark Drower and the Everyones is a classic piece of folk rock singer songwriter goodness that forms an essential part of our very origins. The Mirror was no doubt boosted by Emma Leach’s fabulous recent biographical addition to our website, her wonderful memories of Mark Drower and the Everyones. It’s a great read and you can enjoy it by clicking here.

Coming in at number ten is The Paranoia Song by Clonk!. 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 July 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 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 July 2021 into one agreed playlist and published it on the first day of the new month.

This is the biggest playlist we have made so far. It features 83 different awesome independent artists.

We plan to start scaling these things back in the future. After all, not many people have the attention span to listen to one track all the way through, let alone 83! Anybody who listens to even half of a musical discoveries compilation is somebody of exceptional stamina.

This July 2021 playlist is the 60th musical discoveries compilation. It represents five years of amazing music and a remarkable voyage of listening enjoyment.

There are over 2000 wonderful independent artists and aver 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.

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. 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 daily. Sometimes we have a day off, but we tweet most days.

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 July 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!

Emma’s memories of Mark Drower and the Everyones? Published at the Wud Records website? Seriously?!

Yes, it’s true! One of the original members of The Everyones, Emma Leach, has very kindly written her memories of Mark Drower and the Everyones.

It’s a wonderful piece of writing that is a real joy to read. We highly recommend it.

It has also been tremendous to relive these delightful memories through the lens of her perspective. We already published the memories of Mark Drower and the Everyones by both Pok (which you can enjoy reading by clicking here) and George (which you can enjoy reading by clicking here).

Emma describes many of the events that occured throughout the Everyones period. The events articulated so eloquently in Emma’s memories of Mark Drower and the Everyones were fundamental. The Everyones were highly significant with regards to how the wider Wud posse have become that which we have become today.

These memories seem to be growing more and more precious over the passage of time. It seems hard to believe that it is 39 years since the first legendary performance of Everyone in July 1982. It would be wonderful if more memories happened to be forthcoming, as it was certainly a highly memorable event. Should any more ever come our way, we shall of course let friends and followers know via our News service and on Twitter.

One of the things that Emma mentions in her recollections is some of the fabulous music, chosen by Mark, that was used throughout the show. The music was often accompanied by the performances of three dancers.

Emma mentions 2000 Light Years by the Rolling Stones and how the play opened with Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter. ELP’s Oh Lucky Man, we’re fairly sure, was a new addition for the second series of shows at Exeter Cathedral and it wasn’t included in the original King’s School set of performances.

When Everyone met his muse Treasure, as can be seen in two of the photos, Money by Pink Floyd was the theme to introduce the scene. The photos were taken by George’s friend Giles Staddon who was in the audience. Giles had been armed with George’s parents’ horrible ghastly cheap camera, which he had been forbidden to take with him but he sneaked it out anyway, along with a rotating cubic flash bulb that had only four single shots to it, hence only four photos. How technology has changed in the past 39 years!

Somewhere in the middle of that scene came the song from The Blaze Tape EP, Treasure.

When Everyone was left sat at the front edge of the stage all alone, having been forsaken by the fickle Treasure, burning photocopied fake money, Breadfan by Budgie played. Breadfan began from the middle, at the start of the gentle wistful part with the beautiful guitar and haunting vocal. The three dancers slinked onto the back of the stage in black leotards. As Breadfan cranked up into its classic riff, the dancers became more wild and their performance was the transition to the next scene.

Robert Fripp’s Exposure was used at one point in the performance, as was a Peter Gabriel track.

The play ended to the sound of David Bowie’s Five Years, with Simon jamming along on lead guitar from the gantry with Mark, and the whole cast coming together on stage for a final bow.

The three original dancers were Amanda Drew, Caireen Toms and Adrienne Law. Amanda moved away to Leicester to study theatre over that summer and was replaced for the Exeter Cathedral performances by Jo Wilson.

Although we lost touch with Caireen, Adrienne and Jo a very long time ago, we know Amanda went on to enjoy a very successful career in acting. She works mostly in the theatre and has also appeared many times in popular uk tv dramas such as EastEnders and The Bill. She also starred in a highly memorable award-winning advert where she played a young mother having a tantrum in a supermarket, shocking her young daughter. Amanda is also known for her tremendous work as a redoubtable champion of retired racing greyhounds.

If you’d like to read and see more about Amanda, here’s a link to her Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Drew

If you would like to read Emma’s memories of Mark Drower and the Everyones, please click here. You can listen to the beautiful songs Mark composed at the same time. ;-)

If you would like to follow Emma on Twitter @emlovesherlife, please click here.

To enjoy listening to Emma’s most recent musical project, Strange New Things, click here to open her SoundCloud page.

A new cover design for Ride That Fantasy by Recluse? Surely not!

Yes, it’s true. We have created a new piece of cover art for Recluse‘s Ride That Fantasy album. It’s a fabulous album too.

The Ride That Fantasy CD we were given by Recluse had no cover art. All there was to go on was the track list on the insert and the name of the album on the CD itself.

To make the new cover art for Ride That Fantasy we actually used a photo of the band from the artwork of their earlier album, Propaganda. If you look at the cover photo you will see the band in Piccadilly Circus, London. To the left we see Chris White (bass), centre is Alex Painter (guitar, vocals) and right is Tim Desmond (drums).

Propaganda is a magnificent collection of songs by Recluse. If you haven’t heard it yet, we highly recommend it. You can enjoy it by clicking here.

Once we had the photo scanned and saved, the next thing was to find the right font. We decided to use the same font as the band had used for their Propaganda album and made the text using an old and still awesome piece of software from Macromedia, called Fireworks.

We also chopped out and added the little ‘world’ symbol that Recluse used on the cover of their Propaganda album.

Ride That Fantasy by Recluse is an album full of terrific songwriting and tremendous musicianship from three young guys. They were an awesome live act whose songs would enrapture their audience as well as create a decent mosh pit. Shortly after making this album the band went their separate ways to study at university.

Although we don’t know what the members of Recluse are doing any more, we hope it is something musical and we wish them well. If we find out we shall let listeners know in our News service and on Twitter.

If you would like to listen to Ride That Fantasy by Recluse, including its new cover art, over at SoundCloud, you can do so by clicking here.

If you prefer instead to listen to Ride That Fantasy by Recluse right here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for June 2021 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist. Tracks have been arranged from one to ten according to their popularity and take into account plays, comments, likes and reposts.

The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to reposts, then likes and comments over plays. This is because when somebody reposts a track it gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help to creative souls. Likes from people who clearly don’t listen to the music are ignored.

Songs published at Bandcamp are also completely omitted from the SoundCloud statistics. This is because Bandcamp statistics require separate treatment.

Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored.

Only you, the listener, can influence our July 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 June 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! They remained at the top of our charts for a fourth consecutive month with their 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.

There has already been, and will also be, further news published regarding upgrades to other songs from Dark Company’s Alien Heat album in the coming days. We are busy fixing these in the hope of being able to repair broken gear and finish the guitars fairly soon.

A second recently upgraded Dark Company song from their work-in-progress Alien Heat album entered the June 2021 chart at number six. The lyrics for Prisoner were inspired by Frank Oz and Jim Henson’s incredible and allegorical 1982 movie The Dark Crystal.

Also sneaking into the number ten spot of the chart in June 2021 is a third song for Dark Company. Architect is the opening song from their delightful Ghost of the Art album. Architect is a magnificent cosmic hard rock and trance song which is very much still work-in-progress.

Flicker had another fine month at SoundCloud, occupying three of the positions on the latest chart. All three are taken up by tunes from their wonderful 2002 album At Least 1000 Words. In recent times Oily Road Hideaway and Welcome to the Family have been tremendously popular and appear in positions two and three respectively. Back in our chart yet again is the ever-popular Moonpath, which has featureed in many of the top ten charts since we started publishing them.

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.

Alchemeon had another excellent month. Orb was at number four, down from two last month. This beautiful, multi-faceted gem of a progressive rock / space rock epic was performed and recorded Live in Session Spring 2009. It has a tremendously strong and uplifting feel to it and was Alchemeon‘s first encore in an extended set. It is a real favourite of the wider Wud posse and we are delighted that it has been receiving some attention and love. A version comprising mostly scratch tracks lies in our machines and will someday be added to Pok‘s Anthology album.

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

Even more unbelievable is the recently approved scheme to cause irrepairable damage to the ancient World Heritage site Stonehenge. The british government want to build a badly conceived and unnecessary tunnel that will make money for the politicians that approved it, who are sponsored by the construction companies who will get the contracts. Politicians need to be more like Formula One drivers and wear the logos of their sponsors on their suits.

Please visit this website for more information and sign their petition: https://stonehengealliance.org.uk/

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

Also appearing on this month’s chart we see the first two tracks from the delightful Cherry Smoke Empire album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Good Times drops one place from last month‘s number six to this month‘s number seven, while The Furniture / Los Muebles (part 1: overture) climbs from ten 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 June 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 over three years behind on 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.