News

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

We plan to scale these back even further in future. After all, not many people have the attention span to listen to one track all the way through, let alone 58! Anybody who listens to even half of a musical discoveries compilation is somebody of exceptional stamina.

This August 2021 playlist is the 61st 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.

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 August 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!

A new photo gallery for Pok the Bard has been created at Wud Records!

A number of photos have been sent to us recently of the PokStar and we realised there was no gallery attached to his pages at the Wud Records website. That has now been remedied.

It is true that there are many photos of Pok all over the internet. He has been photographed and filmed more than any of our other artists. As and when more photos of Pok come to us we shall be adding them to his new gallery from now on.

We invite fans of Pok and his many musical projects that have existed over the years to check back from time to time to see if there is anything new. If we upload a large number of photographs, we will inform fans in our News service and on Twitter.

If you happen to find a Pok photo or several among your own collections and you would like to send them to us, we will be happy to add them to this new gallery and credit the photographers for their contribution.

The Pok photos we have been sent recently come from Claudie Fae, Cliff Smith Photography, Sue Nitti, and some unknown photographers. We are very grateful to them for allowing us to host their images of Pok.

Wud Records are planning to work on and release more of Pok’s songs fairly soon, after the current phase of Dark Company and Flicker work is complete. There are more songs currently lying in slumber in the Wud Records machines that need to be finished to complete Pok‘s Anthology. We are hoping to be able to continue this important work starting in September or October.

To admire this new gallery of photos of Pok the Bard, please click here.

The Three Versions EP has been released at SoundCloud! The Three Versions EP comprises three versions of the same song.

Come In Out Of The Rain has been interpreted in three unique ways by three different ensembles. They are all friends of the band Critical Error, with Rosie Mullin‘s vocal being the constant factor. The three versions have been compiled into one three-song EP.

The Three Versions EP has now been added to Critical Error’s pages in the Wud Records Archives. We hope you enjoy the Three Versions EP!

Come In Out Of The Rain was recorded most recently by The Acolytes in 2016. Besides adding his voice to the song, the faders were operated by none other than Grice Peters at the wonderful Sound Gallery Studios in Exeter, our friendly neighbours until Wud Records left the uk permanently in 2017.

Besides running Exeter’s premier recording facility for many years, Grice has also had several albums of his own music released by Hungersleep Records. Each one is completely wonderful and we are huge fans of his fabulous creations. You can check his music out by clicking here.

The version of Come In Out Of The Rain by City Man Panics was performed live and recorded in 1992 by the legend who is Paul Bateman. Paul was the go-to front-of-house engineer for many of us back in the day. There are not many people who could pull off a pink mullet whilst still being taken seriously, but Paul had that ability in addition to his many other talents.

Paul was the engineer for the eponymous album by Critical Error and both of Rough Terrain‘s studio recordings, the Howell Road Drmo and then the Daylight Demo. Both demos were later remastered and added together to form Rough Terrain‘s Exit Stage Deaf album.

Come In Out Of The Rain was also recorded by Headzoo. We are not sure exactly when. It seems probable that this was in 1991. The recording was made at a now unknown studio in Minehead on the beautiful north coast of Somerset.

We are very excited to be able to say that some more material by Critical Error and their many friends will be released in the fairly near future. We shall let fans of the bands know about these releases in our News service and on Twitter.

If you would like to listen to and download the Three Versions EP from Bandcamp, you can do so by clicking here.

If you would like to listen to Three Versions of Come In Out Of The Rain by Critical Error and Friends over at SoundCloud, please click here.

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

Dark Company‘s 30th anniversary is upon us in August 2021. It seems quite unbelievable and yet it’s true. How the world has changed in the intervening 30 years!

Back in the summer of 1991, George had a dilemma. Should he go to university to study music at Salford? After all, he was offered one of just 30 or so places from several thousand applicants. It was the only modern music course of its kind in the UK at the time. Salford University even offered to pay him far more than the vast majority of students and to fix his accomodation and moving costs, so keen they were to have him there. Or – should he stay in Exeter to be the doorstep Dad to his young son?

A once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity? Or family loyalty?

What actually made up his mind was Pete’s offer to live in and run a recording studio. George and Pete had written songs together in the band Alien Heat, which had ended abruptly a year earlier. They hugely admired each other’s respective talents. The thought of taking the songs they had already written together and the potential of crafting new ones made that decision easy.

Pete also had a dilemma. He had just built a recording studio and had kitted it out with, at that time, state-of-the-art eight-track recording gear. He had persuaded his new and somewhat younger wife to spend a small fortune on all the equipment, building work, acoustic treatments, and so on. She was a classically trained musician. Pete wanted to help her develop and express that side of herself further. He also hoped they could become a husband and wife musical team in a band.

The person they had already installed in residence was hopelessly unreliable. He was only interested in his own music. His flaky mental health deteriorated and he was ultimately sectioned after starting a huge fire in a historical building and hurling bricks through the windows of lorries whilst attempting to hitchhike his escape.

So Pete owned a fabulous recording studio, which he didn’t have the faintest idea how to work, having persuaded his wife to buy all of the equipment. George needed to do something with his musical talent whilst being Dad to his young son.

It was a perfect match.

With the previous incumbent languishing in a special unit in hospital, George moved into the studio. He was very happy with his new “private detached residence” and all its fancy musical gadgets.

Pete and George had already started working on a couple of the old Alien Heat songs. The songs they had chosen to record before George moved to Salford had never been properly finished by Alien Heat. They were Prisoner and Traveller. In hindsight they seem very apt titles, considering the nature of George’s aforementioned “stay-or-go” dilemma!

The songs Prisoner and Traveller will both appear on Dark Company‘s forthcoming Alien Heat album.

You can hear the work-in-progress version of Alien Heat as it stands right now by clicking here.

The Alien Heat album is a tribute to the Alien Heat band, which came before Dark Company. It showcases the amazing songs that the band created, albeit with a slightly different spin.

Before long, new songs started to flow from Pete’s pen. Killer, Astrologer and Second Sight were all new. Killer seems to be a song about George’s “stay-or-go” dilemma. Astrologer and Second Sight were lyrics that Pete wrote whilst on holiday with his family in Bexhill.

Rowena was most enthused by the situation. She was keen to add the sound of her saxophone and flute to the band’s songs and she encouraged Sammi to play flute as well.

Armed & Dangerous and Animal House were both lyrics that Pete had written during Alien Heat days. George crafted the music from riffs and progressions he already had kicking around in his head. Crash was another song that Alien Heat had performed live.

Some of the hottest local musical talent started to get on board as well. Jazz musician Jeff Willmot joined on bass and soprano sax. Jeff knew a lot about drum machines and production from his DJing. Ben Ballard on drums and Don Wills on guitar also joined the band. All of them were amazing musicians with excellent reputations.

Suddenly the demo that Dark Company were creating in order to find other musicians was turning into an album.

One Thursday morning, after finishing the lyrics for Future Sadness Past, Pete drove into town to fetch Jeff. Before the other band members arrived for a rehearsal, the trio had spontaneously created the weird experimental psychedelic song Future Sadness Past that you can hear on the Signmaker album.

The Signmaker version of Future Sadness Past is a bootleg from that very day. Although Dark Company tried to recreate the song on a few occasions, the results were never as pleasing.

Signmaker was originally released on cassette in December 1991 as a seven song album. Since then it has had three re-releases with bonus tracks included and new artwork. The most recent update was in 2010, when the whole album was remastered. All the physical copies on cassette and CD have long since sold out.

We are planning a few surprises for fans of the band to mark Dark Company‘s 30th anniversary. These will be announced in our News service and on Twitter.

To celebrate Dark Company‘s 30th anniversary, and for a limited time only, we are offering Dark Company‘s Signmaker album at 30% discount on Bandcamp. Use the code “signmaker30” to claim your discount.

This 30th anniversary offer expires on August 31st, so don’t wait! Click here now to claim your copy.

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.