New Release From Woo

Independent Project Records (IPR) has announced that UK cult band WOO will reissue their debut album, Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong, originally released in 1982 via the band’s The Sunshine Series Records label, as an expanded edition on January 16, 2026.  This genre and time-defying selection of songs marked the public’s first exposure to the wild sonic experimentations that brothers Mark Ives and Clive Ives would be known for over the following decades. “Mark and I had been home recording for five very prolific years before Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong was compiled,” says Clive. “The thirteen tracks we selected from this period are very diverse in style, yet magically complimentary.”

The first singles, “The Attic” and “Swingtime,” are at radio now. A rare instance of a WOO track featuring vocals, “The Attic” finds the brothers Ives embracing their formative love of a more traditional song form. The song’s lyrics came from a Roger McGough poem; its depiction of an art student capitulating to a corporate job and abandoning true creativity was seen by WOO as a cautionary tale. As the bubbly electro-pop lulling the story and the five decades of music that followed indicate, WOO chose to have pure creativity lead the way. “Swingtime,” which is the first track on the album, captures the brothers facing the equipment they had just set up in their South London home studio and bracing for a lifelong adventure of wild sonic experimentation. With its exuberant mix of out-of-this-world synthesisers and traditional instruments taken to their most gleefully abstract potential (including guitars that the early 80s press was quick to link to those of the Durutti Column).

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Label: Independent Project Records