News

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!

The Cherry Smoke Empire pages have been upgraded at Explicit Music. This is great news for fans of The Bastard Sons of Dennis! Now you can follow the lyrics to all of the songs on Cherry Smoke Empire and read all manner of facts about the songs.

Cherry Smoke Empire is an album of original songs by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. It was finished on 17th May 2017 and features 17 songs, including the comedy flamenco epic The Furniture / Los Muebles. This extraordinary creation was split into nine separate parts. In between each part is another song, which has nothing to do with furniture.

We discovered recently that Cherry Smoke Empire had very few pages on the Explicit Music website. Therefore, we have been working with our publishing partners to rectify this situation.

Now every song from the Cherry Smoke Empire album has its own page at Explicit Music.

In addition, we have updated the band’s Cherry Smoke Empire page here at the Wud Records website as well.

We created a table below the text describing the album. There you can click on the various icons that follow the names of the songs.

Click on the pink ‘quavers’ icons to read all the song lyrics as you listen. The green ‘page’ icons will open a window to allow you to read information and fun facts about each song. The third icon, the blue ‘trolley’, allows you to download the individual tracks from the Wud Records digital store at Bandcamp.

If you would like to try them out for yourself, please click here to go straight to the page.

Please click here to view all of the Cherry Smoke Empire pages over at the Explicit Music website.

If you would like to listen to an uninterupted version of The Furniture / Los Muebles, without taking a break to listen to another song, we released it as a single a few years ago. You can listen to the whole of The Furniture / Los Muebles on SoundCloud by clicking here, or you can listen and even download it from Bandcamp by clicking here.

There is likely to be some news regarding the Cosy Lube Turtle album in the fairly near future. We shall, of course, keep all fans of The Bastard Sons of Dennis informed via our News service and on Twitter.

The last four Alien Heat songs by Dark Company have been upgraded and uploaded to Dark Company‘s Alien Heat album. All sixteen songs are now considered beta status.

We have been finishing off as much as we can of the Alien Heat album. We have high hopes of finally repairing equipment this month and recording the guitars and basses. Then we will finally be able to master and release the songs soon after. That is the plan, at least!

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. We plan to release alternative and stripped back mixes, including & co versions, of all the songs for fans to enjoy once everything is done.

The Alien Heat album has received upgrades in batches of four songs at a time. The final four songs to receive their upgrade are Alpha Omega, Wonderlust, Bodyfire and Mister Dream.

Alpha Omega is a crazy piece of progressive rock and bossa nova which we absolutely love. Plans are afoot to add a brass section. Other than the guitars and basses needing to be properly recorded we are largely pleased with how this is going. Sven’s drumming along with the programmed drums makes for a fabulously rich and compelling rhythm track and Pete’s languid vocal delivery is an absolute delight.

Wonderlust lies somewhere between post punk and hair metal and again mostly needs guitars and a better mix of the drums. Sven’s drumming and Josh’s approximations of Zaphod’s original keyboard parts are completely fabulous.

Pete’s lyrics and vocal have inspired Dark Company to consider making a more mournful, slower jazz version of Wonderlust. Having been privy to a private live performance, it’s a very exciting and interesting idea that is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.

Bodyfire has recently had the addition of Richard Davies on tenor saxophone and we love what he did. We are still trying to find a trumpeter willing to blow the lines currently sounded by the Akai S900’s trumpet samples. Again it’s mostly guitars and bass needed here, including a 12-string acoustic that we hope to get done soon. We believe Bodyfire will make an excellent single and plan to release it as such.

Mister Dream is a song with a fascinating backstory as well as being uptempo and amazing. The aforementioned Akai S900 plays an important role in the overall sound, which is enormous. There are over 120 tracks to blend together in the DAW, so it is quite a task.

There exists a bootleg recording of Jeff creating some of Mister Dream‘s sequencer parts and George improvising a searing widdlesome shred on Nicodemus, which we absolutely plan to dig out and add as a bonus track. The musical skills at play in the recording are completely breathtaking.

If you would like to listen to the Alien Heat album, as it stands at present, right here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

Should you prefer to listen to Dark Company’s Alien Heat album at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

Should you fancy listening to bootleg recordings of live original versions of these songs by the band Alien Heat, please click here.

Fruit Bats added to the Archives at Wud Records? After all these years? Surely not!

Yes, it’s true! Two songs by the Exeter duo Fruit Bats have been added to the Wud Records Archives. You can find them as a sub-page of Critical Error.

In case you only happen to find one track there, it is because you have been very fast! We like to spread out the release times a little at SoundCloud due to the way new tracks are discovered at that platform. Fear not! Thinking About You will be released within 48 hours of The Mad Song‘s release.

Fruit Bats were Rosie Mullin on voice and Aidan Whiteley on guitar. They formed after Critical Error disbanded. Fruit Bats performed a handful of shows around the Exeter area in the late 1980s.

Rosie believes that the Fruit Bats wrote five original songs. Two of them are here. The other three have been lost to the vortices of time and space, sadly.

Should they ever happen to reappear in such a way that we are able to bring them to you, we shall do our best. Perhaps one day, something like “more Fruit Bats added” will be a news headline at Wud Records!

In other Critical Error news, Rosie recently sent us some photos of a Critical Error reunion beer that took place at the Double Locks in Exeter. We have added them to the Critical Error gallery and you can enjoy them by clicking right here.

Critical Error even jammed some songs together, with Paul Bateman playing the late great Steve Mavin’s role. Paul was the engineer for the band’s eponymous eleven-track album and a wonderful musician.

If there are any significant developments on the Critical Error front, we shall of course let you know in our News service and on Twitter.

If you would like to listen to Fruit Bats here at the Wud Records website, you can do so by clicking here.

Should you prefer to listen to them over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

If you would like to listen to the fabulous Critical Error and read all their fascinating tales, backstories and lyrics, please click here.

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for October 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 November 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 October 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 Horizontal Hold, a very wonderful song that is still work-in-progress. 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.

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

Exploding back into the new chart at number two is the suitably spooky Seeing, We Should. This is a very weird song and vies with Future Sadness Past from Signmaker to be Dark Company‘s oddest track in the public domain.

Seeing, We Should was created by Pete recording a number of different sounds from his old Korg analogue keyboard, then the band arranging them into a coherent pattern. The vocal was recorded as a stand-alone and is completely atemporal.

Still at number three 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 very soon.

The other two Dark Company songs to be featured in the October 2021 chart are Cover Up from the Can of Worms album and Please Try Later, from Noir. Both are work in progress, even though they sound pretty good already. Cover Up is at number six and Please Try Later rounds off the new chart at number ten.

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

Beautiful Wings is back in the charts again, at the number four position. 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.

Welcome to the Family returns to the new chart as well, at position five. 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.

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.

Two tracks by The Ug Brothers feature on the latest chart. Wibble and Bling from the 1995 Cute But Weird album is a rumbustious feel good funk rock romp with brilliant and under-rated virtuoso playing. It can be found at number seven, followed at eight by a live instrumental jam of a track called Homeless and Boneless. This comes from the lofi cassette salvage collection of Ugstrumentals, the name given to instrumentals by The Ug Brothers. Homeless and Boneless is slated to appear on a Flicker album sometime in the future.

Last month’s chart topper, Alchemeon‘s Castrol GTX a-Go-Go, drops eight places to this month‘s number nine. Besides being a work of insane genius, there is a tremendous backstory behind the composition of Castrol GTX a-Go-Go. You can read it at any of the song’s own web pages, such as on Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and Explicit Music.

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 October 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.