News

January 2024 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 January 2024 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.

As such, 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 (without the spaces) 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.

Now that Twitter has been largely destroyed by its newest owner, it is difficult to foresee a time that we will be tweeting much at all any more. Perhaps someday somebody will buy the platform from him and repair all the damage he has done. Until then, it’s become no better than farcebeak.

Wud Records has set up camp at BlueSky and if you would like to follow us there, we would be delighted to have you on board. Click here to find us!

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.

January 2024 continues an eighth year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 89 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 January 2024 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!

Social media is dead. Perhaps not for you, but it is for us. It seems like a waste of our time pursuing it any further just now. Let us explain.

What Happened?

Facebook was quite good about ten or fifteen years ago. We had a growing healthy organic following there.

Then we made the mistake of paying fb for some of their own advertising.

Watch the video below.

What happened next was a disaster, and ridiculous. Paying fb for legitimate advertising killed our page. You can read about it by clicking here.

We abandoned fb and found that Twitter was a much better place to go. It worked well for several years. And then it was bought out by Musk, who has destroyed it.

Even on fb, with a following of about 800, our posts there might be seen by about four to eight people, which is around 0.5 to 1%.

These days, on Twitter, we’ve gone from our tweets being seen by around 500K people per month, to our posts, as they are now called, being seen by about 30 people on average. We have around 16K followers on Twitter, so 0.5% would be around 80 impressions/tweet. Our tweets are rarely seen by that many. It’s even worse than fb! Amazing.

There are other platforms of course. Instagram is owned by Meta, the same company that owns fb, so it’s hard work. Threads is also owned by Meta and not available in central Europe, so it will be rubbish even if we used a VPN to pretend we were in the USA. You can be sure that if it’s owned by Meta, it will be rubbish.

Mastodon is as dead as a doornail. A total waste of effort and time. You’ll find more life in a mortuary after all the staff have gone home.

And BlueSky, while perhaps the most promising, simply doesn’t have the kind of membership numbers yet for it to really work very well. We get virtually nothing there at all. Maybe one day it will be good, but for now, it needs to grow. A lot.

What does that leave? Telegram, Snapchat and Tiktok might be worth investigation, but again it means starting from square one. And then there are the other also-rans.

So, Now What?

Just because social media is dead, there is no need to mourn.

The best thing we can do is focus on making music. Nobody else can do that for us in the way we need it done.

We shall not be deleting our socials, but we plan to use what little time we have available more effectively. Whispering pathetic nothings into a lonely pointless wilderness seems rather futile.

In other words, we shall be taking a big step back from anything social media related for the foreseeable future.

If you would like to look us up on social media, please click here to see what’s available on our linktree.

Much better would be if you bookmarked or favourited our News service and came here directly for all the newest updates.

You can join our Bandcamp Community, where we also post updates, by clicking here.

If you would rather listen to some of our music instead, there is plenty to enjoy in our Artists section and our Archives section.

Jump in and enjoy it!

20 Most Played Tracks of 2023

We thought it might be fun to make two playlists of the 20 most played tracks of 2023, one each for SoundCloud and Bandcamp. We felt that such playlists would enable fans of our bands to hear what has been hot and to have the opportunity to enjoy listening to some of our most popular tracks of recent times.

SoundCloud

Wud Records had a moderate year on SoundCloud. Streaming activity was slightly down on 2022. We gained around 300 new followers overall, ending the year with just over 3750 followers. It is very pleasing that more new fans across the world are discovering and enjoying the great music made by our amazing artists.

Making a SoundCloud playlist of the tracks that were popular there is easily done. To listen to the 20 Most Played Tracks of 2023 playlist at the SoundCloud website, simply click here to open that page in a new tab.

The 20 Most Played Tracks of 2023 was dominated by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. They enjoyed having ten of the top twenty songs. Nine of those ten songs are from their Cosy Lube Turtle album. The only song from there to miss out was Before the Kiss a Redcap. One song from their Cherry Smoke Empire album completes the ten.

Last year’s most streamed song, Astronomy, has been at the top of our monthly charts for an amazing nine months by now. The only month in which it was not at the top of our charts in 2023 was March, when it dropped to number two to make way for Short and Sweet by The Subterraineans.

Appearing alongside our dynamic duo and The Subterraineans in 2023 we see Flicker, Dark Company, Alchemeon and Rough Terrain. This means that the three active bands we have on SoundCloud are all represented, as is the most recently retired legacy act.

A band whose Demo EP was remasterd and re-released in 2023 regained a surge of popularity throughout the year. Short and Sweet by The Subterraineans was our second most streamed track on SoundCloud and our most streamed on Bandcamp. It’s a truly extraordinary creation from the beautiful and unique mind of Dean Trotter. Rest in peace, old friend.

All four of the Flicker tracks are wonderful instrumentals from their much-loved album At Least 1000 Words. We managed to remaster and re-release this fantastic album in 2023 following our long awaited control room upgrade.

The most streamed track at SoundCloud in 2022, Oily Road Hideaway by Flicker, was also the most streamed SoundCloud track in 2020. In 2023 it dropped down to number four.

We are working on more tracks for Flicker’s second album, HappySad, and hope to bring some of them to you before long.

Dark Company achieved two of the top twenty songs, with both of them coming from their forthcoming Alien Heat album.

Alchemeon managed to have two of the top 20 most played songs of 2023. Both are from their splendid Live in Session Spring 2009 recording.

That leaves a solitary Rough Terrain song, and a rather surprising one at that, to round out the year’s chart.

It is worth noting that these are only the most streamed tracks at SoundCloud, rather than the most popular. The total amounts of likes, reposts and comments have been ignored. Taking these other factors into consideration would inevitably yield different results.

Top 20 Most Played SoundCloud Tracks 2023

1. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Astronomy (+2)
2. The Subterraineans – Short and Sweet (re)
3. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Seven Screaming Diz-Busters (+4)
4. Flicker – Oily Road Hideaway (-3)
5. Flicker – Welcome to the Family (0)
6. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – She’s As Beautiful As A Foot (+10)
7. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Wings Wetted Down (+11)
8. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Dominance and Submission (+4)
9. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – The Came the Last Days of May (new)
10. Dark Company – Dancing in the Dark (-9)
11. Flicker – Farsight (0)
12. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Redeemed (new)
13. Dark Company – Ship to Shore (re)
14. Alchemeon – The Freaks (Shall Inherit The Earth) (-6)
14. Flicker – Week Five (-1)
16. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – The Furniture (part 1: overture) (-3)
17. Alcehemon – Castrol GTX a-Go-Go (re)
18. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – The Subhuman (new)
19. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Teen Archer (new)
20. Rough Terrain – Down at the Elephant Fayre (new)

Bandcamp

It’s been a reasonable year for Wud Records on Bandcamp. Sales and streams were fairly even across the whole year, with The Subterraineans, Laughing Sun, Flicker and The Bastard Sons of Dennis all enjoying spikes in sales soon after their albums were released to Bandcamp, or in the two latter cases, re-released.

Bandcamp is the platform with the best ethos in the business. If you are not a member yet, it’s time to join.

One of the great features of Bandcamp is its Communities. You can join ours by clicking here. ;-)

Overall in 2023, both our streams and sales were down very slightly compared to 2022. The best-selling album was Dark Company‘s Rage in Heaven, and the best selling individual track (but it was a very close call!) was Moonpath from Flicker‘s At Least 1000 Words album.

The 2023 chart of most streamed tracks on Bandcamp sees a good spread of different artists, with no particular act claiming domination for the year’s Bandcamp streams.

Over at Bandcamp it is not so easy to make a simple playlist of our popular tracks yet. Instead, what we have done is created some sort of playlist here, within this very news post, for your listening pleasure. Simply clicking on the links below will allow you to play the various tracks.

Top Most Played 20 Bandcamp Tracks 2023

1. The Subterraineans – Short and Sweet (new)
2. Laughing Sun – It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain (new)
3. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Dominance and Submission (+1)
4. Flicker – It Starts Right Here (+2)
5. Flicker – Farsight (-4)
6. Pok the Bard – Whatever You Are, Whatever You Do (+1)
7. Mark Drower and the Everyones – I Know I Know You (-2)
8. Flicker – Minack (+23)
9. Wud – That’s No Way to Pay a Bodyguard (+12)
10. Pok the Bard – We Know You Well (+80)
11. The Ug Brothers – White Water (+3)
12. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Before the Kiss a Redcap (+51)
13. Pok the Bard – Wanted to Be a Singer (+76)
14. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Seven Screaming Diz-Busters (+60)
15. Flicker – Week Five (+22)
16. The Bastard Sons of Dennis – Then Came the Last Days of May (+12)
17. Flicker – Sauce! (+79)
18. Dark Company – Sacrifice (-16)
19. Dark Company – Medicines (-4)
20. Laughing Sun – Fire Burning Fever (+45)

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2023 against the figures for 2022, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2023 against the figures for 2021, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2023 against the figures for 2020, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2023 against the figures for 2019, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2023 against the figures for 2018, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

If you would like to compare all of the figures for the most played tracks of 2023 against the figures for 2017, please click here to open the relevent news post in a new tab.

The December 2023 Chart

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

We almost included data from Spotify and the other streaming platforms, but unfortunately the data arrives too late from the distributors. We may delay the creation of these playlists for three or four days in the future, although this will be a team decision as we do like to have it up on the website from the first of the month.

If we were to start including streams from Spotify, and other platforms that our distribution companies reach, the only artists to chart would be the ones being distributed. There is a certain disparity between the amount of streams that come from our distributed albums compared to what we put on SoundCloud and Bandcamp, even though our figures there remain good. Perhaps things might change and in the future we might include more platforms. But for now, it remains as it is.

How Did We Calculate The December 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, providing they do not mangle their stats too horribly in the conversion/downgrade to ‘insights’.

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 January 2024 chart. So if there is a track you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! 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 December 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 December 2023 Top Ten?

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis! They continue to dominate the chart in December 2023, claiming seven of the top ten positions, including the top three. All of the songs are from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album, with their cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s Astronomy holding on to the top position for a remarkable ninth consecutive month. Can anything top it next time around?

Cosy Lube Turtle has been available on Bandcamp for some time. Towards the end of 2022 we released the Cosy Lube Turtle album to SoundCloud as well. Recently it was sent for global distribution.

Since the studio upgrade early last year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Another album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis, Cherry Smoke Empire, is currently on the slab.

A progtastic full-band mini-album by the dynamic duo is also in the early stages of finalisation. Sadly we tend to feel that further recordings of their many remaining Blue Oyster Cult covers seems an unlikely prospect. This is mostly due to “discommunication, disorganisation and general untogetherness”, as the legend who is Paul Bateman once said of them when they were in Rough Terrain.

We finished the remixing and remastering of Cosy Lube Turtle in the autumn just gone. The new and improved Cosy Lube Turtle album was re-released early in October. We are still considering holding a Cosy Lube Turtle listening party at Bandcamp at some point when everything can be arranged.

This month‘s number one song, Astronomy, is a profoundly beautiful and haunting song. It was 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 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.

Climbing six places from number eight to number two is the next song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot is another Blue Öyster Cult cover, which originates from the Long Island quintet’s 1972 eponymous album, Blue Öyster Cult. The original version is highly psychedelic.

When covered by The Bastard Sons of Dennis, Chuck tunes his guitar to DADGAD. The twinkly noises at the beginning are created using an old computer fan and its assorted janglesome danglesome appendages. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot was often performed first in a set of Bastard Sons of Dennis songs, due largely to the tuning.

Before the Kiss a Redcap is a re-entry at number three and the third Cosy Lube Turtle song on the new chart. It is the song that The Bastard Sons of Dennis performed live the most frequently. It would often pique the curiosity and lure unsuspecting bar patrons to where the live music was being performed so they could see for themselves what was going on. It was a very popular and fun live song, and quite often a set opener.

Before the Kiss a Redcap is the story of some events that took place at Conry’s Bar, on The Turnpike in New York. It is the fifth song on the eponymously titled Blue Öyster Cult album, released in 1972. Its lyrics were allegedly inspired by a real event witnessed by Sandy Pearlman, in which a biker offered him a barbiturate to be taken via a kiss.

Then Came the Last Days of May drops three places to number six. This song tells a true story of how three university friends of Blue Öyster Cult’s guitarist, Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, were brutally murdered in a drug deal that went horribly and tragically wrong. The version by our dynamic duo adds a twist to the versions heard on Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous studio album and the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees album from 1975.

Derek would sing “Now and then a duck” instead of “truck”, which caused fans of the duo to bring toy ducks with them along to live performances. Chuck’s solo is largely based on the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees version, and his little whistle at the end (which didn’t always come out quite right in a live show) came from the character Tom Good in the uk tv sitcom The Good Life.

At number seven is second re-entry for our gruesome twosome, which comes in the shape of 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.

Down five from number four to number nine we see another song from the Cosy Lube Turtle album. This is the opening track, Dominance and Submission. 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.

The final re-entry to the new chart at number ten is Teen Archer by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Chuck uses a drop-D tuning and the song always had a wonderful uptempo energy when the duo performed it live.

Teen Archer comes from Blue Öyster Cult‘s awesome 1973 album Tyranny and Mutation. It has a fun and infectious groove to it that The Bastard Sons of Dennis do a splendid job of recreating on two acoustic guitars. There’s even a comedy percussion section as a nod to Albert Bouchard‘s drum break.

Dark Company

Dark Company‘s only entry in the new chart is the beta mix of Alpha Omega, from the forthcoming Alien Heat album.

Alpha Omega is a truly incredible song, a progressive rock/bossa nova masterpiece in several parts. At just over eight minutes in length it takes us on a crazy journey. Perhaps the most surprising thing about it’s appearance in the charts is that it is a new entry at number four, as the song is already the third most streamed song overall in the December 2023 chart.

Pete, who possessed an actor’s Equity card, used his dramatic training to great effect in the talkover section. This is where the time signature changes every bar, from thirteen to ten to seven to four, all over eight, then back to the beginning again. The rich chocolatey languidity of his vocal throughout Alpha Omega is completely captivating and one of his best performances we ever managed to capture.

Alpha Omega also has a tremendous backstory as well as tremendous lyrics. You can enjoy both at the Explicit Music website by clicking here. We hope you will love this wonderful song as much as we do!

Alchemeon

A new entry at number five from Alchemeon is Born, from their Live in Session Spring 2009 recording. This album is a collection of bootlegs from various Alchemeon sessions. Born was their set opener, so is the first track on the album.

Born is a fabulous piece of cosmic progressive rock, composed by Pok the Bard in 1985 and first performed by Laughing Sun. Another version of Born by Alchemeon, from their earlier Winter 2008-09 collection, has already charted.

Born has a gradually building spacerock intro and the verse is breathtakingly beautiful when it arrives. “Back so far you’re out in front again” is such a wonderful lyric. Born ends in a sparklesome shower of latin fireworks, a compelling hyprnotic groove, reminiscent of bands such as Jade Warrior or Caravan perhaps.

There is an amusing out-take as well, where “faintly fishy fireman’s daughter” was accidentally sung instead of the correct lyrics, “faintly fiery fisher’s daughter”. The mind boggles.

Flicker

Flicker had a single entry on the new Wud Records chart. It comes from their incredible 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Down six places from last month‘s number eight is Farsight by Flicker. Farsight is a delightful and whimsical 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. For the full backstory, we recommend the tune’s page at the Explicit Music website.

At Least 1000 Words was remastered and re-released recently. It has also been distributed worldwide to sites such as Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, Tidal, and so on.

If you wish to download the album At Least 1000 Words by Flicker, we absolutely 100% recommend doing so from Bandcamp.

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.

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

Why use Bandcamp?

Whilst several of the other platforms offer music downloada, they charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price. This means that you pay more, the band recevies less and a big greedy corporation takes a big chunk for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big corporation who can rip people off however they want.

Buying the album from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. It’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible as they are the best site for supporting artists. You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you are wish to add a little extra support for the artist.

Consider also the danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform, or even cease to exist altogether. To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish.

Listening Options

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

December 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 December 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.

As such, 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 (without the spaces) 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.

Now that Twitter has been largely destroyed by its newest owner, it is difficult to foresee a time that we will be tweeting much at all any more. Perhaps someday somebody will buy the platform from him and repair all the damage he has done. Until then, it’s become no better than farcebeak.

Wud Records has set up camp at BlueSky and if you would like to follow us there, we would be delighted to have you on board. Click here to find us!

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.

December 2023 continues an eighth year of Wud Records Musical Discoveries compilations. That means 88 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 December 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!

Happy New Ear 2024! \,,/(^_^)\,,/

It is with great pleasure that we wish everybody a very Happy New Year in 2024! Let’s hope it’s a memorable one for all the right reasons.

The whole team would like to say a massive thank you to everybody who supported us in 2023. Without you, we couldn’t do this. We are very grateful and humbled by the support we have had from every corner of the earth. You lovely people continue to amaze us and make us smile.

2023 proved to be a pretty good year for Wud Records. In January, our long-awaited studio upgrade took place – ahead of schedule – and then we set about correcting and repairing the audio which we’ve simply never been able to hear properly since the days of Silent Running Studios back in the mid 1990s.

At Least 1000 Words by Flicker was remastered and re-released, and distributed to all the big streaming services.

This work was finished shortly after the serendipitous discovery of raw material for an interview that took place shortly before the album was first officially released. It was packed with amazing insights into the creation of At Least 1000 Words.

Cosy Lube Turtle by The Bastard Sons of Dennis was remixed, remastered and released, and also distributed to all the big streaming services.

Both At Least 1000 Words and Cosy Lube Turtle quickly paid for their own distribution costs and are in profit. Yay!

The first two Dark Company albums, Signmaker and Rage in Heaven were also globally distributed and quickly started earning a profit.

The merch stores for Wud Records, Flicker and Dark Company also produced a few sales throughout the year. All in all, these things have been a tremendous help.

We even managed to release some new music in 2023!

Osobní Hv​ě​zda by Flicker was released in April and added to the HappySad album.

Then in November, The Dark, The Ring and The Knowledge by Pok the Bard was released and added to his Anthology album. Both tracks are exclusive to Bandcamp at this time.

A fair amount of work was done to progress many more tracks towards their release, especially for Pok and Flicker. We are very hopeful of further new music releases in 2024.

Three of our long lost friends discovered Wud Records and got in touch during 2023. This was unbelievably amazing!

The legend who is Mark Drower first wrote to us back in March, which blew all our minds. Mark was the man who helped light the fuse for us all back in 1982.

Al Shalliker, the main man behind Plymouth reggae band Watershed, who really should have achieved international superstardom, finally wrote after many years of searching for him. We are currently working with Al to distribute Watershed‘s amazing music from their various albums and EPs.

Dave Danielli, bass player, drummer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and former member of Flicker and The Ug Brothers found us and got in touch. We were blown away by the things he wrote.

Towards the end of 2023 he felt inspired to make some bass parts for us, and started making and sending us the basslines for all the Cosy Lube Turtle album songs.

We plan to release the new versions of the songs as bonus tracks. Most of them have been recorded and are in the process of being mixed and mastered.

A couple of legacy song collections were added to Bandcamp for your downloading pleasure. We wanted to experiment with some old recordings using the new studio setup. The Subterraineans Demo was released there in March, and Cander by Laughing Sun was added in May.

Wud Records increased its global profile with a kindly earlybird invite to BlueSky (thanks to the very splendid Grunge Norris :) ) and new linktrees were created for Flicker, Dark Company, Pok and The Bastard Son of Dennis.

We also set up a Twitch channel for livestreaming from our studio, although due to the haphazard nature of when we can actually do anything in there, it hasn’t had much uptake. Why not follow the Wud Records Twitch? Simply click here!

We’re considering using Discord as well, as that platform seems to be more popular.

Although our sales and streams on Bandcamp, and streams and engagement on SoundCloud were both down a little on 2022, presumably due to the slow painful death of Twitter, the streaming and sales revenue from distribution has more than made up for that.

Not such good news, the demise of Twitter. Our engagement there has dropped from 300K-500K per month to such a low rate (around 0.0015%) that the platform has become virtually unusable. We have set up camp at BlueSky and Mastodon, and so far both of those have been even quieter. Holding out some hope for BlueSky in the future.

Is social media dead? Perhaps it is. With luck, somebody will buy Twitter from Musk and start repairing the damage he has inflicted on that once fabulous platform.

Anything owned by Meta, such as fb and ig is not worth the effort. So the jury is well and truly out on that particular front. It is impossible to see Wud Records participating in such futile activity very much for the foreseeable future.

What about the Musical Discoveries compilations we have been publishing for more than seven years? We started making them to shine a spotlight on some of the most obscure musical treasures you will ever hear. For a long time there was interest in these compilations, but that has now waned to the point where we are planning to stop making them unless the interest returns.

Have people become tired of the war against independent music? Do fewer people actually care about this amazing artform? Is the number of people who want to preserve real music for the benefit of future generations dwindling and dying?

We just don’t know. However, the future of the Musical Discoveries compilations is now in severe doubt due to the lack of interest.

Life tends to take all manner of twists and turns and events that have taken place recently have further reduced our opportunities to make music. Time has become more and more scarce. In fact, the machines in the studios have sadly remained silent since the end of November, due to the lack of time. We hope some more time will be found from somewhere soon, but as there are only 168 hours in a week, that remains a conundrum.

Apart from wishing for a little more time for making music, what we would love to see in 2024 would be a lessening of the hate and polarisation that seems to be growing around the globe. As teenagers we had great hopes for the future, hopes that when the older generation shuffled along, the new blood would create levels of understanding, tolerance and comradeship not seen before on a global scale.

While we can look back with joy upon events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, those spring flowers of hope we once had have largely crumbled to dust, in a very similar way to that awful cold war monument itself. Everyone seems to be becoming more aggressive, more offended, more entrenched in their separatist views, and the whole world, politically at least, seems to be lurching sharply to the right. Did humanity learn nothing from the two world wars in the last century? Perhaps not.

Let’s pray to the gods of rock n roll for an end to wars, more tolerance and understanding, the eradication of hunger and poverty, better distribution of wealth, cures for diseases that affect so many in the poorest nations of the earth, a reduction of misery and suffering for all, and a global humanity where we are all brothers and sisters together. We only have one world and one species and being kind to each other would be a pleasant change.

What are you planning to achieve in 2024? Whatever it may be, we wish you success beyond your wildest dreams and a very Happy New Ear 2024!