News

Greetings to all you fine readers of the Wud Records News service! For the last few weeks we’ve been enjoying some relaxing times like many others over the holiday season. Now it’s a case of back to work and we have many exciting new things to bring you in the coming weeks and months.

The best piece of news we had recently was that the Wud Wagon passed its annual MOT without needing even a bulb to be changed. It’s the first time any of us here can remember an MOT test for one of our wagons that didn’t involve at least a small amount of extras. So hooray for that and thanks to Mitsubishi for making a reliable wagon.

Maxx, Sven and George all met up to listen to and contemplate further Flicker recordings. We are very excited about this as not much has happened on that front for some time.

Toddlers tend to pick up lots of colds and that is precisely what has happened with the young members of the extended Wud family, sharing their germs around their elders like nobody’s business. Hooray for the youngsters, keeping Kleenex and other tissue manufacturers in business. In other health news, Pete from Dark Company has some terrible ulcers on his leg which have left him bed-ridden for some time. We wish him well.

The main computer in Studio One has suffered something of a crisis of memory, in that it has lost the soundcard and we have not been able to show it where it is, even though it is in its innards. Don’t you just love computers.

Once this has been sorted, more sessions with Pok the Bard are planned with the focus on completing some of his songs for the Anthology album. There has been talk of a ‘Best of Alchemeon’ collection as well, with a few tracks selected and many more to be chosen.

We cannot make this news post without mentioning the recently departed. The world felt like a better place with David Bowie in it and we all felt deeply the loss of one of the greatest cultural icons and thinkers, and musical innovators, that this world has ever known. Thanks for all the music David, your memory will live on with us forever.

Lemmy Kilminster from Motorhead and Hawkwind must also be acknowledged. Apart from his own musical and cultural contributions to the world, he was a personal friend of Pete from Dark Company, back in the days when Lemmy was leaving Hawkwind and forming Motorhead. They were both prominent members of the motorcycling fraternity in London at the time and his loss was felt more deeply by our Peter than by many. R.I.P Lemmy.

After the loss of two such titanic figures and with many others having left us in recent years, we now need, more than ever, a new generation of musical heroes to stand up and carry the baton forward so that when their time comes we can remember them with smiles and thanks too. Unhealthy TV talent contests and quick cheap disposable pop just isn’t really doing it right now and we believe there is another way.

Don’t forget – you can listen to an ever-growing collection of songs from Wud Records artists on SoundCloud by clicking here – and you can follow Wud Records on Twitter right here – and you can support us by downloading some music from our shop at Bandcamp by clicking here.

Happy New Year!

The Subterraineans Demo from 1987 has now been repaired and added to our growing collection of playlists at SoundCloud. This is a rather rough-sounding demo which features the songwriting talent of the late great Dean Trotter on vocals and guitar. He was earnestly supported by Jerry on bass, Graham on drums and George on guitar and vocals. The Subterraineans used these songs to hawk their trade around various bars and clubs and managed to procure a few shows from them.

Sadly the band only lasted for a few months due mainly to Dean’s rather complex character and never fulfilled their potential. One could argue the case that The Subterraineans didn’t quite have the necessary skills to do justice to Dean’s extraordinary powerful and sensitive songs. When pieced together they tell the tragic story of what happened to Dean and predict his untimely demise at Clifton Bridge in Bristol.

If you would like to listen to The Subterraineans Demo here at Wud Records, please click here.

If you prefer to listen over at SoundCloud, click here instead.

Pok brought his newest acoustic guitar along to the Wud Records studios yesterday for the latest Anthology recording session. This one is a beautiful and rare Tanglewood from Nashville, Tennessee and its rich mellow tones have now graced two of the songs on the forthcoming Anthology album.

Centre of the Cyclone was recorded first, and then Pok laid down the parts for Wanted to Be a Singer. Both of these old classics are sounding fabulous and it was a refreshing change to hear some shiny new strings and have a break from the intensity of collective contemplative chin-rubbings and fiddling around with drums with Sven. It was also a much quieter session as Sven is a particularly heavy hitter for a drummer.

Some of the Centre of the Cyclone action was even captured on video before the memory card was full. We anticipate that there will be a number of video releases from the Wud Records stable in the springtime of 2016.

At the moment the only available versions of both of the songs Pok recorded yesterday are from two separate 1985 Laughing Sun collections: Cander and Indeed. We will be adding the finished versions of both songs to Pok’s Anthology album when they are finished, and nobody apart from a select few of the greater gods of rock’n’roll knows when that might be. Further news updates will be posted in the Wud Records News service when available.

If you would like to hear the Laughing Sun version of Wanted to Be a Singer from Cander, please click here.

To listen to Laughing Sun’s version of Centre of the Cyclone from Indeed, please click here.

The latest playlist to be repaired and uploaded to SoundCloud is the special collection of Ugstrumentals by The Ug Brothers. These instrumentals – or ugstrumentals, if you will – are a behind-the-scenes collection of live tracks captured on cassette during rehearsals for the band to work out lyrics and for Natalie to rehearse her vocal parts.

Several of these tracks – especially the earlier ones in the playlist – never made it to the stage or had lyrics written for them in the end, and the quality of the playing is patchy, from awful to brilliant. The Ugstrumentals were the seeds of what eventually became Flicker, George’s instrumental composition project with assistance from Dave and others.

We plan to do some sort of mastering job to these Ugstrumental recordings some day as they have their own intrinsic charm and have proven popular in the past. When this happens we shall let you know about it of course, in our splendid News service.

If you would like to listen to The Ug Brothers’ Ugstrumentals here at Wud Records, please click here.

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

Old Hands by Dark Company is the latest album to be repaired and added to SoundCloud. Old Hands is a collection of songs from different Dark Company eras and is perhaps Dark Company‘s most eclectic album, with songs belonging to the hard rock, ska, heavy funk, rock, house, punk, ballad and dark gothic indie genres all present.

The songs on the Old Hands album are still in the early stages of finalisation, with plenty of work in terms of production and performance needing to be done before we can finally call it done. We thought you might like to hear it in its current state, as with most of the rest of Dark Company‘s songs, so published the work-in-progress version for your enjoyment. Further notifications of updates to Old Hands will be posted in our News service.

In other Dark Company news, Pete was in Studio One on the Sunday just gone and recorded his vocal part for a new song called Head Rush. This will be a track on Dark Company’s forthcoming 12th album, as yet untitled.

A couple more sonic upgrades have been done to songs from Dark Company‘s Ghost of the Art album as well. We recently completed beta mixes of White Bird on Ivory and Mighty Diamond, leaving just three more tracks to be upgraded. The Ghost of the Art album will be uploaded to SoundCloud once the remaining tracks have been polished up a bit more.

If you would like to listen to Old Hands here at Wud Records, please click here.

If you would prefer to listen to Old Hands over at SoundCloud, please click here.

Dark Company convened for some studio action yesterday, with Pete laying down his vocal parts for Project Terminated from Dark Company’s forthcoming 12th album, as yet untitled, unpublished and unheard, except by us. We think you will love it!

We even filmed a bit of the action, with Pete recording the words “Project Terminated!” in a most Dalekish style using a purple toy megaphone encrusted with numerous red LED gems, which was all good fun. These things are possibly still available from Maplin should you fancy one yourself. They are only about £1.49 so how fabulous is that.

At some point when we have decent video editing software we shall upload this video, along with many others, to our rather dormant YouTube channel.

Due to Pete’s ever-deteriorating health, we are unable to run very long sessions and have to make the most of him when things are functioning.

Earlier today some cunning boffins with really, really big foreheads and gravy-stained white lab coats smelling faintly of mothballs made a beta mix of White Bird on Ivory from Dark Company‘s Ghost of the Art album. There are four more songs still to receive their upgrade from that particular album. Songs from Ghost of the Art will be uploaded to SoundCloud in the near future so you can hear and enjoy the progress we have made.

We shall let you know about this along with any other Dark Company developments in our News service, of course.