Wud Records: May 2022 top ten tracks published at SoundCloud

The top ten SoundCloud tracks for May 2022 from Wud Records have been published in a new playlist.

Tracks are arranged from one to ten according to their popularity. The algorithm we use gives greatest weight to reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays.

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!

Songs published at Bandcamp and other platforms are omitted from the SoundCloud statistics because they would require separate treatment.

Archive tracks and bonus tracks are also ignored, as are likes and comments from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

Only you, the listener, can influence our June 2022 playlist. 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!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during May 2022 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, as well as other platforms.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated because they genuinely help us keep the fires burning. 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 seem worthwhile.

Congratulations to Flicker! Flicker enjoyed a good month on the new chart, occupying three of the positions. All of the Flicker tracks are from their wonderful 2002 album At Least 1000 Words.

Remaining at the very top of our chart is Oily Road Hideaway, a delightful 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 on his Fender and George on the Plank.

Another Star in the Sky is the second Flicker track to appear on the May 2022 chart. Another Star in the Sky is a beautiful wistful bluesy jazzy rock instrumental which features Lucy Welsman on cello. This one has been in and out of the top ten since we first joined SoundCloud and falls two spots this month to number five.

Welcome to the Family drops one place on the new chart from eight to nine and is the third Flicker tune to find representation. This is another 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.

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.

There are five songs in total by Dark Company, who enjoyed another splendid month for Wud Records on SoundCloud during May 2022. Four different Dark Company albums all find representation, with one song each from Signmaker, Can of Worms and Old Hands, and two from Rage in Heaven.

Spiritual Remission from the album Can of Worms remains at number two for a second month. It features Pete’s wonderfully languid vocals and lyrics that reference literature and legend as well as personal experiences.

Recently Spiritual Remission has been enhanced with new bass and drums and the wonderful melodica playing of Olly Joseph. We are hoping to be able to include Olly’s talents in a few more songs in the future. You can listen to Olly’s fabulous compositions at his SoundCloud page by clicking here.

Please remember to follow our News service and Twitter for further announcements regarding the forthcoming upgrades to the Can of Worms album.

Sacrifice, the opening track on Dark Company‘s Rage in Heaven album, is a re-entry at number four on the new chart. Recently Sacrifice has enjoyed radio play on a number of stations. This is probably a contributary factor in its resurgent streaming popularity. Sacrifice is an alluring and curious mix of progressive rock, trance and rap. The genre-bending nature of the song has helped it appeal to fans from multiple musical subcultures over the years.

Probably also due to an outbreak of recent radio play, Medicines is in our charts yet again, this time down from four to number six. Medicines has been our biggest selling song over the years and people still seek it out and enjoy listening to it.

Medicines was popular in Europe rather than in the uk where Dark Company formed. Mainstream radio in the uk didn’t want to play it as the intro was “too long” and the lyrics “too difficult to understand”. They are about a subject other than procreation, the only subject a dumbed down mainstream audience seems capable of understanding, according to the purveyors of mainstream media themselves.

Down one place from last month‘s number six to the new number seven is Crash, from Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker. Crash is a high octane esoteric mix of hard rock and jazz funk. It has been likened to Talking Heads, Van Halen, AC/DC, ZZ Top and The Who amongst others.

Crash was originally an Alien Heat song, and Alien Heat used it to open their live show. Sadly, no recording of the Alien Heat version still exists, as far as we know.

There is also a different work-in-progress version of Crash on Dark Company‘s forthcoming Alien Heat album and a wonderful remix featuring lots of voice samples from an omnibus edition of EastEnders, broadcast on BBC television in late 1991.

A new entry at number ten is Dangerous, the fifth track on the May 2022 chart from Dark Company. This is at present still a demo version. Dangerous is a very interesting and wonderful song in its own right. We love the curious lyrics and the beautiful guitar and bass parts. It will be a great day when we can finally finish and release the Old Hands album!

One of the two remaining tracks on the May 2022 chart comes from The Ug Brothers. It’s an ugstrumental bootleg of Fang, up from last month‘s number seven to number three.

Fang was a perennial live rocking favourite. It has a quick tempo and rather bleak lyrics about sleep vampires. Sleep vampires, we are told, are people who steal your sleep. They can sleep soundly in the same bed or the same room, or a neighbouring room, while you toss and turn and are unable to find peace of mind or comfort of body for the whole night long.

Although this rendition of Fang is a lofi instrumental jam salvaged from cassette, there is another version by Doctor Watson with vocals, which you can enjoy by clicking here.

The only other act to be represented in our chart this month are The Bastard Sons of Dennis. Their wonderful epic song The Furniture / Los Muebles is an extraordinary tale, which threads its way through the entirety of the duo’s Cherry Smoke Empire album. This song tells the story of a dysfunctional family of fisherfolk from northern Spain, who lost and then found some of their furniture following a flood. The Furniture (part one: overture) has charted many times and reenters at number eight.

None of our other acts made it onto the chart this month.

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in May 2022, 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.

Recently we have added a few more of the previous charts as pages to their section of this website. We are still more than a year behind in this work, but at least a little catching up has been done. If you’d like to see all our old charts, they can be accessed easily by clicking here. More pages will be added soon, when there is time.