News

Wud Records: September 2023 Musical Discoveries

Posted by Wudmaster on 01/10/23

September 2023 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 September 2023 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 that we shared 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 2023 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 might 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.

We used to tweet just about every day. Since late 2021 things have become increasingly busy, meaning we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. Full tweeting days are now something of a rarity. When they happen, we try to do a clump of full days together over a period of a fortnight, if possible.

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 typically takes 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.

September 2023 begins an eighth year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 85 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 September 2023 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!

Flicker: At Least 1000 Words remastered and distributed globally

Posted by Wudmaster on 19/09/23

At Least 1000 Words Remastered and Distributed Globally

At Least 1000 Words remastered and distributed globally? Really?!

Yes! Now that Flicker‘s album At Least 1000 Words has been remastered, it has been sent for global distribution.

Although you *can* download the album from some of the platforms, we strongly recommend downloading it from Bandcamp instead.

There are three compelling reasons.

Firstly, you will end up owning a higher quality file format of your choosing. Bandcamp offers downloads in MP3, V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV, and AIFF. It comes with all the free artwork you need to make your own CD, if you want to make one.

Secondly, you will pay less for the digital download at Bandcamp than other huge corporate providers.

Thirdly, not only will you pay less, a greater proportion of what you pay for the album will support the band directly. At Wud Records, we offer our artists massively more favourable terms than any big label we know of. Why not google the typical rates? Other search engines are available.

Big greedy corporations like to take huge markups from whatever they charge. For example, Amazon are charging $9.49 for an album of mp3s and they take around 30% of that.

At Bandcamp you can download At Least 1000 Words for €7, which is $7.48 at the time of publishing this news post. Bandcamp only take 15%. They take 0% of it if you happen to buy the album on Bandcamp Friday.

After the sales platform has taken its cut, the distrubtion company takes a percentage of what’s left. Then the label and the publisher take a percentage. The rest goes to the performers and composers, in other words, the band themselves.

When possible, please support your favourite artists through Bandcamp. Try to avoid enormous megacorporations that are only interested in money, rather than supporting amazing independent music.

At Least 1000 Words is now available for streaming on the following platforms. Simply click below to open the album in a new tab.

https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/album/at-least-1000-words
https://soundcloud.com/wud-records/sets/flicker-at-least-1000-words
https://open.spotify.com/album/14dLK23sFERjeVdINndF9X
https://listen.tidal.com/album/313844727
https://music.apple.com/us/album/at-least-1000-words/1705245867
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kUh9DWftZ3ubJ-6wZrrO31uMk4PMH2RRQ
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kUh9DWftZ3ubJ-6wZrrO31uMk4PMH2RRQ
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0CH1JDBZX
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH1H2JVN
https://www.deezer.com/en/album/483247375
https://www.boomplay.com/albums/76215821
https://web.napster.com/album/alb.3981693497924328

Flicker’s linktree has been updated with all of these streaming services. Check it out by clicking here!

If the album is not yet live on your favourite streaming service, it will probably come online in the coming days.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the listening party at Bandcamp on Saturday. We might hold further listening parties for other albums in the future.

And That’s Not All…

In other Flicker news, a little more progress has been made recently regarding some of the tracks that will be included on Flicker‘s HappySad album. They are Shooting Star, Wouldn’t You Know It, Little White Dress and Victim of Success. You can hear some very dodgy demos of the entire album by clicking here.

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.

At Least 1000 Words remastered and re-released - the back cover of the CD jewel case.

At Least 1000 Words remastered and re-released – the back cover of the CD jewel case.

Flicker: Dave and George reunited live at the At Least 1000 Words listening party

Posted by Wudmaster on 15/09/23

Dave and George will be reunited live, for the first time in over 20 years, at Flicker‘s listening party on Bandcamp, for the re-release of the band’s album At Least 1000 Words.

We’re very excited about this and can’t wait to see what will happen! We cordially invite all Flicker fans to attend.

The listening party takes place on Saturday 16th September at 19:30 CET, which is 18:30 uk time. If you live in a different timezone, you can calculate the time to arrive using a website like this one: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Apart from Emma’s flute and Lucy’s cello, Dave and George composed, played and produced everything else on the wonderful At Least 1000 Words album.

If there is anything you want to ask the two of them about the album, or if you’d just like to hang out with a couple of goofball musicians of enormous experience, talent and knowledge, while their remastered first album plays in the background, sign up at the RSVP link on the Bandcamp page just below and join the fun.

You can sign up by clicking right here: https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/at-least-1000-words-listening-party.

Dave and George have a long history of playing together over the last 40 years, including in our legacy bands Now, Sirius Rising, Wud, Laughing Sun, Alien Heat and The Ug Brothers, and our Archive bands Pyg and the Spacegoats. They always produced a special chemistry and synergy in their music that is seldom found in other musical partnerships.

They have both performed live on stage together countless times over the years, and this will be their first ever live chatroom. George mentioned that he might try to livestream himself on Twitch at the same time, although we cannot confirm whether or not this will happen.

The last time Dave and George actually made music together was in exeter in 2002, around the time George was finishing at university. Since then Dave has moved to the north coast of devon and George has left the uk entirely.

It is impossible to predict what will happen after this, although the magic the two of them intrinsically create together is undeniable. It will be fascinating to see and be a part of what transpires.

Flicker‘s second album, HappySad, is under construction. Much of it is well underway by now and we hope to finish more of its tracks before the end of this year. We shall of course inform Flicker fans of any such developments via our News service and on social media, such as X/Twitter, Mastodon and BlueSky.

To join the listening party, or download your very own copy of the remastered At Least 1000 Words album by Flicker, please click here.

Dave and George composed, played and produced Flicker's At Least 1000 Words album.

Dave and George composed, played and produced Flicker’s At Least 1000 Words album.

Flicker: At Least 1000 Words listening party

Posted by Wudmaster on 07/09/23

At Least 1000 Words listening party? What’s this, you might ask? And where’s my invitation??!

Don’t worry, it’s right here. Everyone is invited.

Click here for your invitation and send us your RSVP: https://wudrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/at-least-1000-words-listening-party

Come amd join Flicker in the chatroom and bring your friends and family.

On Saturday 16th September we shall be hosting an At Least 1000 Words listening party at Bandcamp.

Depending on where you live, it will be at:

19:30 Central European Time
18.30 uk
13.30 New York
10.30 Los Angeles
03.30 Sydney (Sunday morning)
02.30 Tokyo (Sunday morning)

If you live somewhere else in the world, of course you are welcome to join in. Simply convert 19.30 CET to your local timezone. Flicker love everybody around the world, so don’t be shy!

“Why are you doing this? What’s going on? What even is this?” you might ask.

The At Least 1000 Words listening party is a celebration of a fabulous album.

George, the man who conceived the album and composed and played the music, will be there to hang out and chat about the tunes and the album, or anything else.

There may even be a surprise guest or two from the original recording. We shall let you know more about this nearer the time.

OK, so we said we probably weren’t going to do it. But in the end, we did it. The album At Least 1000 Words by Flicker has been remastered again, and re-released.

Having analysed the album in the new studio environment (click on this earlier News post for more details: https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/news/wud-records-control-room-upgrade/) we felt it could be improved considerably, and now it has been.

We’ve also massively improved the resolution of the album artwork.

At Least 1000 Words has been sent away for global distribution. We’ll be adding more links to Flicker’s Linktree as the album goes live on all the streaming platforms, such as Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, and so on.

Recently we upgraded all of the track information for At Least 1000 Words at Bandcamp and Explicit Music. Now, we have just finished upgrading all of the details and backstories for every track on the album at SoundCloud as well.

If you would like to wet your whistle before the listening party on Saturday 16th, you can enjoy At Least 1000 Words by clicking below.

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

To listen at Bandcamp, and even download your own copy, click here.

To listen at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

And don’t forget – to join the At Least 1000 Words listening party at 19:30 CET, please click right here and send us your RSVP!

George, Dave and a lot of gear Flicker used for making the album At Least 1000 Words.

George, Dave and some gear Flicker used for making the album At Least 1000 Words.

Wud Records: August 2023 top ten published at SoundCloud

Posted by Wudmaster on 02/09/23

The August 2023 Chart

The top ten tracks for August 2023 on Bandcamp and SoundCloud have been published in a new compilation.

How Did We Calculate The August 2023 Chart?

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.

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 September 2023 chart. 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 August 2023 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

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 feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from oursevles once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, both of which opened recently, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The August 2023 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They dominated the chart in August 2023, claiming four of the top ten positions. All of them are from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album. They also took the top two places, with their cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Astronomy holding on to the top position for a fifth consecutive month.

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. About a year ago we released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well, and sent it for global distribution.

Since our recent studio upgrade earlier this year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Cosy Lube Turtle is currently on the slab.

We have finished the remixing and started the remastering. The new and improved Cosy Lube Turtle album will be ready for a re-release in the coming days. More news on this will follow soon.

Astronomy is a profoundly 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 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.

Standing steady at its highest position of number two is Redeemed. This song is the final song on Blue Öyster Cult’s 1972 eponymous debut album. Donald Roeser‘s guitar tone at the very end is so incredibly beautiful. We highly recommend listening if you don’t know this song already.

Redeemed is the only recording on Cosy Lube Turtle where Derek and Chuck both played their guitar parts at the same time. They referred to it as their Christmas song, even in summer. The count-in was always improvised and somewhat unpredictable, due to the odd number of beats in the intro. “One, one,” was a popular version.

Last month‘s number eight rises two to number six on the chart this month. Seven Screaming Diz-Busters is a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. It is a song for which they were well known.

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.

Returning to the new chart at number nine we see another song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album. This is the opening track, Dominance and Submission. Its last appearance in the Wud Records charts was in January 2023.

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 distributed them to the audience. Both the stage and the band were covered in them.

Flicker

Flicker had an excellent month with four entries on the new Wud Records chart. All four come from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

At Least 1000 Words has just been remastered and re-released. It will also be distributed worldwide to sites such as Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, Tidal, and so on. There will be a listening party at Bandcamp on Saturday 16th September at these times, depending on whereabouts you live:

19.30 Central Europe/Johannesburg
18.30 uk
13.30 New York
10.30 Los Angeles
03.30 Sydney (Sunday morning)
02.30 Tokyo (Sunday morning)

Everyone is invited to join. Composer, guitarist and project director George will be live in the chatroom to discuss the album and there may even be a surprise guest. More on this will be published soon in our News service.

The highest re-entry this month is Oily Road Hideaway at number three. 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 panned to the left on his Fender and George panned to the right 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.

Welcome to the Family climbs four positions from nine to five on the new chart. Welcome to the Family is a wonderful latin-jazz-rock-fusion instrumental. It builds from its acoustic guitar beginings to a heady climax of guitar feedback and noise. There is a lovely bass solo from Dave, who also plays all the keyboard parts with outstanding aplomb and sensitivity.

Welcome to the Family was inspired by The Godfather by Mario Puzo and a new chord from a Portuguese sea shanty. It is one of Flicker‘s most enduring and popular releases.

Aeroplane by Flicker is a re-entry at number seven and makes its first appearance since October 2020, nearly three years ago. Aeroplane was composed on an acoustic guitar tuned DADFCE and was the first piece of music George composed after arriving in Prague in 1996. Phil “The Fiddle” Jones played some wonderful soaring violin lines when the two of them performed this tune live on the famous Charles Bridge as Dr Watson.

When Flicker recorded Aeroplane, no violinist was forthcoming so Lucy approximated Phil’s parts rather beautifully on cello. Dave added bass and drums and a swishy synth to end. The band tried to record a plane taking off at exeter airport, but there were no planes taking off that day so a sample was used in the end. The whole story of the day’s sample capturing adventures/misadventures is a rather splendid tale all of its own, and you can enjoy it by clicking here.

Returning to our charts for the first time since November 2022 is 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.

The Subterraineans

Short and Sweet is an amazing, beautiful, wonderful, epic classic rock song. It rises from last month‘s number five to this month‘s number four.

A massive favourite for many years, Short and Sweet used to profoundly affect people listening to it whenever The Subterraineans played this song live. Like many of Dean’s songs, it is a rather poignant prophetic prediction of Dean’s ultimate fate and how he felt about his struggles.

Short and Sweet is well over eight minutes long and feels much shorter somehow. Jerry’s bass sounds a bit uncertain at the start, but he always played it that way so he must have had some idea what he was doing!

The main reason for the success of The Subterraineans these last few months is the recent remastering and re-release of their Demo from 1987. The difference in sound quality of the recording after its enhancement in the new studio is remarkable.

The Subterraineans Demo was recorded on a 4-track cassette portastudio in 1986 and 1987, and mixed onto cassette. The audio degraded even further over the intervening 36 years. Even though it was never going to match today’s standards of perfect high fidelity, we felt that this recording was worthy of addition to our catalogue at Bandcamp.

Dean tragically committed suicide in 1994 by jumping from the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. He was just 29 years old. He received absolutely no professional help from the uk medical or social professions. With a little professional help he would surely still be here with us today. He was a unique and charming character and his passing was a great loss to the world.

As such, we have decided to donate all proceeds of the sale of this EP and its individual tracks, beyond the first euro, to The Samaritans. They do amazing and difficult work, trying to prevent more people jumping to their deaths from that notorious bridge.

Dark Company

Back on the new chart at number ten is Ship to Shore by Dark Company. This is a wonderful progressive rock song with a lot of history. The work-in-progress version on the Alien Heat album was transformed into a hybrid electronic rock song by Jeff and George in the early days of Dark Company‘s second incarnation, when the band became a digital trio.

Originally an Alien Heat song, Ship to Shore has been a big favourite for many years. It begins with a sound that was sampled from the Alien Heat band’s version. Zaphod created this special sound himself on the Yamaha DX7 and the song would usually begin with a cry of “Cue The Noise!”.

* None of our other acts made it onto the August 2023 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in August 2023, 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.

The August 2023 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.

Wud Records: August 2023 Musical Discoveries

Posted by Wudmaster on 01/09/23

August 2023 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 August 2023 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 that we shared 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 2023 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 might 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.

We used to tweet just about every day. Since late 2021 things have become increasingly busy, meaning we are not able to spend as much time on social media as we used to. Full tweeting days are now something of a rarity. When they happen, we try to do a clump of full days together over a period of a fortnight, if possible.

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 typically takes 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.

August 2023 begins an eighth year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 85 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 August 2023 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!