News

Wanted to Be a Singer by Pok the Bard is the latest track to be released and added to his forthcoming Anthology album. This beautiful, wistful piece of progressive rock describes the hopes and dreams of many young people, and anyone who has ever tried to play music would easily be able to relate to the sentiment of this song.

Wanted to Be a Singer was one of Pok‘s very first compositions, dating back to early 1983. At this time he was playing in the band Now. Wanted to Be a Singer was a piece that he and George played many times as a duo and in various musical collaborations, such as Fooog Dinboffin and the Release, Now and Laughing Sun. It was one of the first two songs, along with Johnny Wake Up, that Pok and George sang harmonies together on. It never made a lot of progress in any form other than a Pok/George duo, due to its various complexities and definitive vagaries.

Fresh from his previous week’s triumphant Spacegoats reunion performance at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms, Pok described the finalisation and release of this seminal work as “monumental”. We know that this song has a lot of meaning for him. He describes it as his ‘mission statement’, and as such we placed it second on the Anthology album as it stands right now.

We have set this track to ‘pay what you want’, which means you can even download it for free. Of course, any financial support we receive for our creative works helps keep our artists fed and watered and helps keep the lights burning, so we greatly appreciate everyone who has contributed to enabling us to exist for over 33 years now.

Over the course of the weekend, we had some prolonged and highly productive time in the studio with Pok. As well as finishing Wanted to Be a Singer, Pok laid down some new guitar parts for Don’t Let It Pass You By. We also recorded Sven, who laid down the drum track for Crazy Mandy and did a great job of it, as you will be able to hear one day. We reviewed the various new guitars on Distanced Recognition and We Know You Well, which are both progressing very well, and did some critical engineering work to Distanced Recognition.

Between us we decided that it would be a good idea to work towards having everything that Jim Iz will play his keys on ready to go in the near future. There are several songs that are already Jim-ready and three more that remain: Born, The Centre of the Cyclone and Crazy Mandy. We will let you know of all future developments with regard to Pok and his activities with Wud Records in our News service and on Twitter.

During the course of events over the weekend, we were treated to a visit from the amazingly talented and renowned visual artist and raconteur Rex Short. Rex has already done some work with Pok on various projects in the past and when we release the finished physical Anthology album on CD, cassette and vinyl, we hope that some of Rex’s awesome artwork will feature.

If you would like to download or listen to Wanted to Be a Singer by Pok the Bard, please click here.

If you would like to download or hear the entire Anthology album as it stands right now, please click here.

A brand new playlist of all the favourite musical discoveries of the Wud Records team has been published at SoundCloud. All of the artistes on it are independent and not associated with ourselves in any way. We simply accumulated songs that we all liked during January into one agreed playlist and published it at the end of the 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, and we feel that the ones with fewer plays need the best chance of exposure.

If you are one of the bands from which we recently liked, shared or tweeted a track at SoundCloud, there is a chance that one of your tracks might be on this new playlist!

Are you a member of SoundCloud? We always follow back if you have your own tracks and we always listen eventually, even if it takes a few weeks. So if you would like the opportunity of a bit of free publicity you could follow Wud Records on SoundCloud. It’s even free to join!

We hope that some more people will find and listen to the wonderful songs on this new playlist of musical discoveries. Each one has something that we felt was special or interesting in some way. Because we enjoyed them so much, we feel that it would be great if the artists in question could have a bit more exposure for their fabulous works. So please listen, enjoy, share and check out some of these wonderful bands. In many cases it was a tough job to choose just one track.

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.

If you have a new favourite or two on there, why not shout about them on social media? We are sure the artistes responsible for creating the music will welcome such word-of-mouth exposure.

If you would like to listen to this special new playlist of January 2017 Musical Discoveries over at SoundCloud, please click here.

The top ten tracks for January 2017 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist at SoundCloud. Tracks have been arranged from one to ten according to their popularity.

Further such playlists will be published on a monthly basis. These playlists will take into account plays, likes, downloads and reposts at SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Tracks that are only published at Bandcamp will be omitted from the SoundCloud playlist. Archive tracks will also be ignored.

January 2017 was another reasonably busy month for Wud Records at SoundCloud, although the total amount of plays was down about 15% from our busiest month, which was July 2016. At Bandcamp we enjoyed another busy month of growth on that platform.

We’d like to thank everybody who helped to make January 2017 another splendid month for us by listening, commenting and reposting our bands’ tracks. Only you, the listener, can influence our February 2017 playlist, so if there is a track you particularly like, keep playing it!

When we have a bit of spare time we will make further Top Ten playlists going back to when Wud Records first joined SoundCloud. The way their site is structured makes it easy for us to do so, so well done to SoundCloud for being so splendid in that regard. The Wud Records charts used to be a popular feature a few years ago and it is great to be able to bring them back. We shall let you know when we publish others on Twitter, so make sure you are following us there.

Congratulations to Dark Company, whose song Medicines was our number one track once again in January. Medicines has been a massive track for us for over 20 years and has been a frequent chart-topper. Also appearing in this month’s chart are Flicker, Wud, Laughing Sun and Rough Terrain. Well done to all!

Meanwhile, over at Bandcamp, the recently released epic from The Bastard Sons of Dennis, The Furniture (Los Muebles), received the most plays and downloads. Dark Company‘s fabulous 1993 Rage In Heaven album was the most downloaded album from Bandcamp again, so thanks very much for all your support to those who downloaded our music. It helps keep the lights burning. :)

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in January 2017, as played, downloaded, liked and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen here at Wud Records, you will find that it is our new default music player and you will find it on all non band-specific pages at our site, such as our News service or our homepage.

The Furniture (Los Muebles) is a new release from The Bastard Sons of Dennis. The song was originally included on the Cherry Smoke Empire album where it is split into its various parts. This version is the complete, uninterrupted version.

The Furniture (Los Muebles) is a traditional northern Spanish sea shanty from the Asturias region. It tells a tale of how a disfunctional family of linguistically challenged fishermen lost and then found some furniture following a flood, and the consequences. Linguistically challenged means, in this case, they were not terribly bright and could not even speak their own language very well.

The Spanish version has been loosely translated into English by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. This song and its anomalies of translation make a great teaching aid, if one happens to have students learning English or Spanish. From an idea by Daniel Richardson.

Normally a single would be around 3:30 in length, have a particular kind of sound, and be concerned with the subject of romance or sex if it were to be deemed acceptable for mainstream radio play. Here at Wud Records we think this form of corporate control, brainwashing and censorship is bad news for creativity, so we have released this epic piece of music as a single in defience of their ghastly practices.

Be sure to subscribe to our fabulous News service and follow us on Twitter, where we will publish details of all future releases. There are several more coming soon, so please keep an eye and an ear (or two) open for them!

We have set The Furniture (Los Muebles) for free download or pay-what-you-want from Bandcamp. We hope you enjoy this fabulous piece of music!

To listen or download The Furniture (Los Muebles) from Bandcamp, please click here.

Wud Records’ recommended Bandcamp albums have changed. There is so much great music to recommend at Bandcamp that we try to remember to refresh our recommendations from time to time. We have an eclectic trio of goodies for you this month. Why don’t you click the links and support these great artists with a download, or at the very least, a listen? The ones we have chosen are:

While You Were Gone by Vestbo Trio
From jazz, blues and porn-star funk to Waits/Cave noir crankiness, there’s something for everyone in this beautifully crafted album of eclectic instrumentals.

Песни Тигаров by Lena Markova
Fantastic riffs, musicianship and performances. All in Russian so we understand almost none, but it sounds great and kicks some serious a$$!

The Narluga Epic by Lance Eads
A wonderful acoustic concept album journey from this clever wordsmith. Woody Guthrie meets Frank Zappa. High on entertainment for all ages from 8 to 800.

The three fabulous albums below are the ones making way. All of these are also wonderful recommended Bandcamp albums. Each deserves a download, or at the very least a full listen, so please go ahead and click the links. Albums removed from our recommendations go back into the pool and will reappear there sometime in the future as we still love them all. If you are a fan of awesome twenty-first century progressive rock and progressive metal then you will absolutely love the three albums we chose. Go ahead and click the links! They are:

Twinned With: Your Face by Throatpunch City
Stunning original virtuoso progressive rock, they put on a great live show too.

Rise of the Waterfowl by Farmhouse Odyssey
Keyboard-driven smooth melodic progressive rock from the USA, inspiring and addictive, beautifully crafted songs.

Ode to the Author by Toska
Instrumental progressive metal from three exceptionally talented young musical gurus who also play in the band Dorje.

We will try to refresh our recommended Bandcamp albums every six weeks or so. More joyful unearthed gems will be shouted about in our News service and on Twitter.

You can follow Wud Records on Twitter by clicking here.

Five live tracks by Watershed have just been added to the Archives section of Wud Records. They are the last five songs that the band performed at The Cooperage in Plymouth on Christmas Eve 1990, and during the show the clocks tick past midnight, so you can relive this moment with everyone who was there whilst you listen.

Many years ago there was another 90-minute cassette, which contained most of the rest of this concert. Sadly this cassette was stolen over 20 years ago by somebody who was very fond of Watershed‘s songs, so we have been unable to include any of that for obvious reasons. Whilst we cannot be exactly certain, we believe the performance included Judgement Level, Back Page Rage, It’s Not Yours, Saddest Letter, Purple Town, Fashion Conscious, Living in the Gap, Crusin’ in Contours and some others from their Do It and In Niceness EPs.

We deliberately left the gribulage between tracks in these recordings, so you can experience some of the flavour and atmosphere of a Watershed show. They were very charismatic and personable musicians who always established a great rapport and went down brilliantly everywhere they played. The low-frequency cassette hum is rather horrid, but when the band are playing you don’t hear it at all.

It is possible that this was the first time that I’ll Take You WIth Me When I Go was performed live…

We have collected a few links to other scraps of Watershed we managed to find on their Archive page here at Wud Records. You can also enjoy their cassette EP Life, Times and Dreams by clicking here. If anything else by Watershed should turn up, we shall let you know in our News service and on Twitter. If you happen to have any of their music, or perhaps you know somebody who does, we’d love to hear from you!

To listen to Watershed Live at The Cooperage 24/12/1990 here at Wud Records, please click here.

To listen to it over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.