Wud Records: May 2026 top ten published at SoundCloud

The May 2026 Chart

The top ten tracks for May 2026 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

We shall elaborate further below with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno.

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

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. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives a lot less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €9 album is worth about 4500 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp. You can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

Just as we were enjoying the best month we ever had on SoundCloud last summer, our account was unexpectedly deleted by mistake. The account was subsequently restored, but was still badly damaged. It took until mid-October for it to be properly repaired.

In the meantime, there was not a single word from SoundCloud themselves regarding what they were doing to repair our account. This was the catalyst for a number of the changes that are happening. Our trust in SoundCloud as a place to keep our music was shattered.

Neither do we fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud and its slowly improving Insights system. However, there has been enough improvement in data quality in recent months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

We removed all of our music from the mean green snot machine a few months ago. We highly recommend you do the same, if you have any there. We also highly recommend that you cancel your subscription, and move your playlists (and so on) to a more ethical streaming service. Every other streaming platform is more ethical than snotify.

We don’t say this lightly. Nor do we say so from a position of ignorance. There are many very good reasons to remove all your music from spotify and to cancel your sub. Do it now!

For more information, please refer to this article:
https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/boycott-spotify/

Tidal, Coda, YouTube, Amazon, Deezer, Apple Music, iTunes, etc.

We use data from our distributors Globex, Soundrop and CD Baby for information regarding streams on platforms such as Coda, Tidal, YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts.

Data from the streaming services filters through to us via our distributors, and we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what has been going on across all of the streaming services this way. Because the data arrives several days, or even weeks, late, we only use it to extrapolate general trends. Although, to be fair, it was reasonably good so far in 2026.

HearThis, Audius, Audiomack

We have started organising our music at HearThis since the recent debacle with SoundCloud. Their stats have improved a lot recently and are now somewhat easier to collate.

May 2026 was also a very good month for us at HearThis, although we only have a few artists with music uploaded. Our recent successes there are making adding more music to HearThis higher priority among all the things we need to do. More on this soon.

The aforementioned debacle with SoundCloud was the catalyst for ourselves taking the decision to also begin adding our music to both Audius and Audiomack. Both platforms came highly recommended, although their stats, are also not especially informative. Activity on both platforms has been low and we may yet abandon them, although we have had very little time to dedicate to them.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during May 2026 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. Just one download of an album was worth a couple of months of snotify streams before we left that platform entirely. By buying a download, 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 X (formerly Twitter) and BlueSky 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 ourselves 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, 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.

How Did We Calculate The May 2026 Chart?

The algorithm we use gives greater weight to downloads, then comments and reposts and likes (active engagement), then plays (passive engagement). Different platforms perform differently and are given different weightings based on standard deviation calculations.

We use general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. The data has been amalgamated together from all of the different platforms to make the new Top Ten. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored, as is anything from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

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. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

Only you, the listener, can influence our next chart. So if there is a song 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.

Who’s In The May 2026 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features three different acts, four if you consider The Bastard Sons of Dennis and BSoD + D² to be two separate bands.

There are six songs from Dark Company, one from the Band of Georges, and three from The Bastard Sons of Dennis, including one by BSoD + D².

This month there is one new entry, five re-entries, one non-mover, and three fallers.

Dark Company

Congratulations to Dark Company for topping our fifth chart of 2026! That makes it five months in a row now that Dark Company have topped the charts. By owning six of the ten songs in the latest chart, it would be fair too say that Dark Company have achieved dominance this month.

There is a brand new entry at number one. It is called Red Sun, and is the latest release from the SNAFU CD of Dark Company‘s forthcoming triple-CD album A for Acronym.

Red Sun is such a brilliant song. The lyrics are obtuse but not too much, and full to the brim of Pete’s Loony-Tunes-crazy imagery. The rest of the band are fantastic as well, especially the lead guitar and piano lines. There are three guitars, with the Stratocaster and the Ice Maiden playing rhythm on either side of the stereo field.

When we were all listening to the A for Acronym demos, Red Sun was perhaps the first we heard from the large batch that jumped out at us from the cassette, to shout what an amazing song it is.

Falling from number one to number two is Corner Clowns. Pete wrote the lyric in 2011. George composed the lead line of the instrumental section as a five-year-old. This happened after his third – and final – visit to a south London Sunday school group, where he had been chastised by an older girl for colouring in somebody’s skin with a green pencil.

Corner Clowns is a comedic classic rock song in the key of E major. It is all about the hidden monsters that lurk under your bed at night and in the dark corners of rooms, sometimes just within sight of the corner of your eye. It’s the kind of song that might appeal to children, who will surely be able to relate to the lyrics. The chorus is catchy enough to be an earworm.

The third Dark Company song on this month’s chart is a re-entry at number five. This song is called Black Lite. Pete wrote the lyric in 2013 and it refers to his love for all the fun things that happen during the night, and his perceived alienation from the daytime world.

Black Lite is a substantial chunk of space rock with fat guitars, a stomping rhythm, dreamy synths and occasional drum machine samples. In the demo version, Maxx carried on playing his bass after the rest of the song had finished, because he was well into it, and the band developed a few ideas based upon what he did.

Black Lite features a few DSK synths – the Zith, the Zeth, the Oranze and The Grand. Many DSK synths are free VST adddons and all of them are wonderful. You can pick some up for your own studio by visiting DSK’s website here: https://www.dskmusic.com/

Down four places at number seven is The Forger by Dark Company, from their Rage in Heaven album. This song was the B-side to their single Medicines, which did very well for the band in the 1990s in Europe.

The Forger is one of Dark Company‘s most electronic songs, although live it was much heavier with a dirty guitar playing awesome classic rock. The sub-bass on the Akai S900 was rather fierce and had to be toned back a little.

During the composition of this song, Jeff alternated between playing the keyboards and the bass, whilst turning the Boss DR220A drum machine on and off with his foot. He had balanced a ruler, with one end on the ‘Start/Stop’ button and the other on the floor, to allow him to do this. It was tremendous fun and the whole groove was deeply satisfying.

Pete’s lyrics for The Forger are among his most intriguing and difficult to fathom. He worked as a carpenter for a few years at Interalia Antiques in Exeter, which was owned by his best friend Terry. Pete would say that his job was ‘making antiques’. But perhaps this song is really about a transvestite going incognito and unnoticed, as people tend to only see what they expect to see, rather than what is really there.

After almost a year out of the charts, Killer by Dark Company makes its first re-appearance since September 2025.

Killer remains a very popular song. It was the very first song that Dark Company finished recording, at the old Silent Running Studios in Exeter back in the summer of 1991. It has a hybrid reggae/rock vibe, and is a song that Pete wrote for George, whose dilemma was to stay or go. He stayed.

The drums are provided by an old Boss DR220A drum machine and the song also features the wonderful tenor saxophone of Rowena Parsons. Killer is the opening track on Dark Company‘s first album, Signmaker.

May 2017 was the last time the sixth Dark Company song charted. We were still in England back then, in the throws of packing. A re-entry at number nine, Second Sight is a hard blues-rock number featuring widdlesome guitar, Pete’s atmospheric harmonica playing, and the EDP Wasp.

Second Sight was written in September 1991 and was the second song that Dark Company ever finished. It is the third song on their Signmaker album and was the B-side to their single Killer, which has also charted. The key for Second Sight is C minor, and the tempo stamps along quite happily at 116 BPM.

Band of Georges

For the first quarter of last year, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges has had recently. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs a year ago!

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. Because now, we have been allowed to release all of the volumes of his early songs in their demo form.

We have done very little work to these recordings. They were just lifted from their master cassettes and digitised in our studios, and normalised to 0dB. That was it. Everything sounds just as it was. The cassettes, nearly 40 years old, have stood the test of time very well.

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations. Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud. There is likely to be different extra information given on the two separate pages, as the words come from the keyboards of two separate writers. We recommend you check out both.

Losing Your Grip is down one place from number two to number three. It is an odd and perhaps under-rated song, especially so when it was contemporary. There is a glorious chorus and three verses, each being about a different person and their gradual descents via entropy into insanity. The sections between the verses are in 6/8, or are atemporal dissolutions into strangeness and noise, with all the knobs on the Electric Mistress turned up to full.

Losing Your Grip was also performed by Wud, and their version also charted this month. Ken did a fine job of singing the vocal parts. You can enjoy the Wud version of Losing Your Grip at the HearThis website by clicking here.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

It’s been another very good month for The Bastard Sons of Dennis. They have three songs in our newest chart. Two are from their Cosy Lube Turtle album. The other is from the October 2025 release by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli, Cruelty to Blues.

A non-mover at number four is Seven Screaming Diz-Busters. This a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis. It is a song for which they were well known.

Originally this song was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performances by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

The next re-entry is for The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli at number six. It is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Wings Wetted Down, also from the 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album.

Wings Wetted Down is a masterfully crafted piece of songwriting, with its clever key changes and all its vocal and instrumental melodic hooks. It is considered a deep cut among BÖC fans. The version performed by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is largely true to the original, with the addition of a riff section that Derek solos over.

A re-entry at number ten and making its first chart appearance since January 2025 is 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 hooptiously drangled in assorted random panties.

* None of our other acts made it onto the May 2026 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in May 2026, 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 May 2026 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.