Happy New Ear 2026!

Happy New Ear 2026! \,,/(^_^)\,,/

A very Happy New Year to you in 2026! Let’s hope it’s the best one we’ve ever known.

First, the whole team would like to say a massive “THANK YOU!!” to everyone who helped to support us in our efforts to make music during 2025. We are truly grateful and humbled by the support we have had from the four corners of the earth. You lovely people continue to amaze us and make us smile.

In 2025 we were heard the most in the USA, followed by Ukraine, the uk, Russia and Germany. The top city was Kyiv, and we hope very much that our music brought some peace and solace to the souls suffering the effects of war. And let’s not forget everyone else as well. So here’s wishing a very big Wud Records Happy New Ear 2026 to all our listeners, wherever you are from!

So, whatever happened over the twelve months of 2025? Well…

We removed all of our artists’ music from spotify. That platform is pure evil and the antithesis of music. If you are supporting spotify with a subscription, cancel it. Do it now. If you have music released on spotify, contact your distributor and tell them to take it down. Do it now. We say this with full conviction, and knowledge and understanding of the reasons why you must do this. For more information, click here.

In 2025, something most unexpected happened. We released all of the songs that George recorded on his portastudio in the 1980s. We’ve been bothering him about this on and off for many, many years. He always refused to let us release any of it. Suddenly, in March, it would seem he had a change of heart. Not only did he let us listen to his songs, which were a whole lot better than he had said they were, he let us release them to the general public as well! They have performed very well for us and we regard the entire effort as a tremendous success.

As such, we are planning to release all of those songs to Bandcamp in 2026 so that fans of the songs can own them and enjoy them whenever they wish. More news regarding this will follow in due course.

We made a few compilations of those songs where it seemed logical to do so, such as The Concept Album, the Flashback EP, Песня За (Piestnia Za), and others for our legacy bands that performed George’s songs. There are a few compilations still to be released, and there will be more news regarding this in the early part of 2026.

We also released an album of songs from The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli, Cruelty to Blues. The story here begins with Dave, who first worked with us as the awesome bass player in The Ug Brothers. As a lifelong fan of Blue Oyster Cult, he heard the Cosy Lube Turtle album and felt inspired to pick up his bass and add basslines to the songs. The result was Cruelty to Blues, which was finally released in October.

Besides all of that, we also finished and released two of Pok the Bard‘s most wonderful and classic songs, It’s a Blue Sky Don’t Hold No Rain and She’s Beautiful. Both are very historic and amazing pieces of music and we hope that you enjoyed them. They are both available on Pok‘s growing Anthology album and we intend to release even more of his songs in 2026.

We also released several new Dark Company songs over the course of the year, adding to the work-in-progress A for Acronym album. There are now ten songs from the first CD, SNAFU, out in the public domain and more will be forthcoming in 2026.

We did more work regarding our legacy bands Now and Wud. Some of the writings for Wud were updated and are now nearly done, and an album of their songs was released at HearThis. Now got some new artwork and two new homes, on Audius and Audiomack. More music will probably be added to both in the coming year.

Mark Drower and the Everyones had a song that hit the global Top Ten on HearThis. We were both surprised and delighted that this should have happened to a song that was already 43 years old!

Some more videos were added to our horribly neglected YouTube channel. It would be fabulous if we could add even more in 2026 and who knows, perhaps it might happen.

There were also a couple of untriumphant moments that took place, such as the SoundCloud disaster of July. This happened the month after we enjoyed our best ever month at that platform. Although our SoundCloud account was eventually fully restored after a few months, the platform refused to contact us to let us know what was going on and a fair bit of damage was done. We remain extremely unimpressed.

There was also the final and inevitable meltdown of the old laptop we used to use for streaming in our studios. We have so far not managed to get around to replacing the deceased laptop. Perhaps in 2026?

Looking ahead, we are anticipating a few more operational changes in the coming year, particularly with regard to streaming and social media. To stay tuned, you can join our mailing list by clicking here. Remember also to bookmark our News page and follow us on BlueSky, which seems to be where things are going right now.

Life tends to take all manner of twists and turns. Events that have taken place in the last year or more have reduced our opportunities to make music. Time has become more and more scarce. In fact, the machines in our studios have remained mostly dormant since 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 2026 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 and the Age of Aquarius would begin.

That has not happened. While we can look back with joy upon some 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 and 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? Apparently 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, cures for diseases that affect so many in the poorest nations of the earth, better distribution of wealth, the rolling out of universal basic income for all, a reduction of misery and suffering for everyone, and a global humanity where we are all brothers and sisters living in harmony together. Humanity has the power to do this – and chooses not to.

Perhaps you have seen a photo of the Earth taken from space? We only have the one world, and we are all one species whoever different our neighbour might seem. Being kind to each other would be a pleasant change.

What are you planning to achieve in 2026? Let us know on your socials. Whatever it may be, we wish you success beyond your wildest dreams… and a very Happy New Ear 2026!