Hi everyone and hope you've been having a great week so far. It's been a pretty hectic time over here (scorching hot too), and I've also been away again for the bank holiday weekend so less than half of the days this week have actually been spent in the studio. The days which have been have been jam packed though and there's a lot to share in this week's post! Before we get into the main news though, I had an unexpected return to Hikarian Animations' Tales of Zale earlier this week which was a lovely surprise! While I can't say anything here at the moment, there's some super exciting things coming up for the project in the future (some of which I'll be continuing to work on for the rest of this week) so keep an eye out for that! There's also some more exciting (and nerve-racking) news to come in next week's blog post but today doesn't feel like the right time to announce it, so you'll just have to wait. With all that mini-news said, let's get into the main stuff for this week and start with another new track from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album! 

Another week; another track, and this time I'm sharing track 09 from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album, "You've Got A Lot To Say". This track is one of the more serious ones I've written, all about loss and being there for loved ones in hard times. I feel like "I hope you enjoy it" isn't the right thing to say, but I hope you get something out of it at least and take the message to heart. Check it out via the YouTube video below or on SoundCloud and Newgrounds if those are your usual haunts and without further wait, here's "You've Got A Lot To Say":

Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp​:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon​:
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Speaking of Patreon, yesterday was the final Wednesday of August which means the rewards posts have started up again for the $5+ and $10+ patrons! With the entire Better Than The Book discography (so far) out now, that means it's finally time to start on the back catalog of my electronic / cinematic project: Jabun! Exciting times!

For those of you who don't know, although I've gone by the name Jabun in many places online since my early teen years, I only started releasing music as Jabun in late 2012, at a similar time that Better Than The Book was also starting out. This month, I present to you my very first original track as Jabun - "Bergamot", a relaxing chillstep electronic track which aimed to be as soothing as a nice cup of Earl Grey tea! It's something very different from what you've heard from me so far on Patreon, and I hope you enjoy it as there's a lot more different things coming up in the next few months. Fear not if you prefer my ska punk stuff though as more exciting things from Better Than The Book are already in the works! Become a $5+ patron to download the track now, or wait a week for it to become available to the $1 patrons! If you've yet to hear it, check out "Bergamot" below for a step back into my early days as Jabun, and while I still had a long way to go back then (I still do), I hope you enjoy it:

Hi everyone and hope you've had a great week so far. I've been away for most of this past one, and while super busy with some things, it's been the quietest week in a while with regards news to share. Nevertheless, there's more music and things to show so let's get straight to it!

Another week and another track so let's start off by sharing more music from Better Than The Book's new Hopes and Dreams album and this time it's track 08 "GG" all about fun times playing video games! Check out the YouTube video below for a fun pop-punk anthem filled with nostalgic video games references and some chip-tune inspired extra sounds! You can also check it out on SoundCloud and Newgrounds if those are your usual haunts and without further wait, here's "GG":

Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp​:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon​:
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

In terms of other news, there haven't been any more press features for BTTB's new album this week, though the Hopes and Dreams album turned 1 month old on Monday which feels a little crazy and what a month it has been! In case you've missed them, you can check out all the press, radio and podcast features so far over on the Better Than The Book website! Exciting times!

https://betterthanthebookuk.weebly.com/press.html

Check out the Hopes and Dreams album on Bandcamp if you haven't already, and thanks so much to everyone who's purchased, listened, shared and played the music loud to the world over this past month! It's been an incredible journey so far!

That's about it for this post! It's onto track 09 of the album next week and I'm sure there'll be more exciting news to share with it. Until the next track and the next post, have a great rest of the week and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Better Than The Book and my various projects! Take care and enjoy the music!

Hi everyone and hope you're all having a great week so far! It's non-stop as usual for the news and exciting times over here at JabunAudio, especially for Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album which seems to be going further and further with every week! Another jam packed blog post this time so let's get straight to it!

Let's start as usual by sharing another track from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album, and this time it's the opening track to side B, track 06: "Get A Haircut" all about un-fun times and people being pricks! Check out the YouTube video below for a rage filled pop punk anthem about bullying and my first week in a town which shall remain nameless! At least I got a song out of it! You can also check it out on SoundCloud and Newgrounds if those are you usual haunts, and without further wait, I hope you enjoy, "Get A Haircut"!

Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp​:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon​:
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Next on the news, it's also been another exciting week for radio features (and more) for Better Than The Book! To start with, The Ska Show with Beefy is back again for another re-run and this time track 05 "Brighton" from the Hopes and Dreams album played right after my favourite ska track of all time "The Impression That I Get" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones​! Such an honour and thanks so much to Beefy for having it up on the show (playing alongside, Reel Big Fish, The Specials and Madness too)! Listen in via the Facebook link below and "Brighton" plays at -18:16 from the end followed straight on by a shout out! Amazing stuff!

You can check out the full track list for the show via the link below too:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-ska-show-with-beefy-on-southern-fm/playlist-30th-july-2019/2418165348271856/?__tn__=HH-R

The track which preceded "Brighton", "The Impression That I Get" by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones was pretty much THE song which got me into ska back in the day and is still today one my favourite tracks of all time and one I hold close to heart. If you missed it back in 2017, I even recorded an acoustic cover of the song for my parents' Christmas present that year which you can check out below! Such an amazing track and such an honour to be playing alongside it! Hope you enjoy the cover version:

With "Brighton" added to the list, that makes 5/10 tracks from the Hopes and Dreams album to have been featured on the radio worldwide so far too (that I know of)! Crazy feeling!
 
But the radio news doesn't stop there! All 10 tracks from the Hopes and Dreams album are now on Seattle based internet radio station Bob's Ska Radio​'s rotation! You can even request any of the songs to be played with a dedication if you wish too: just search "Better" or "Book" and choose which track you'd like played! Check it out and listen in below! Thanks Bob's Ska Radio!
 
http://www.bobskaradio.com/index.php/playlist-requests
 
Next, some more press news to share today as the Hopes and Dreams album has been featured in Broken Arrow Magazine​! Check it out and read more in the link below, and thanks so much to Broken Arrow Magazine for featuring the new music!
 
http://www.brokenarrowmagazine.com/have-you-heard-better-than-the-book/
 
And finally this week some super exciting news. Tuesday was a historic day for BTTB as for the first time since its conception in 2012, 4 guys (including myself) got together to jam the tunes live as a Better Than The Book band! Super fun and exciting times, and we'll see where it all goes from here! Who can say for sure, but it's certainly looking to be fun!
 
That’s it for the news this week! Next week we'll be onto track 08 of the album "GG", but I'm sure there'll be many more pieces of news to share too! It's set to be a busy week though I'll mostly away so we'll have to wait and see as to what'll be coming next! Until the next one, have a great rest of the week and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Better Than The Book and my various music projects! Enjoy the new music and take care!

Hi everyone and hope you're having another great week since the last post! The hype train just keeps chugging on over here and it's been another intensely busy week at JabunAudio with yet more radio features and news for Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album, as well as some other fun things to share! It's gonna be another long post so let's get straight to it!

Let's start with another track to share from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album, and this time it's track 05 (the final track of side A) "Brighton" all about my favourite city by the sea! Check out the YouTube video below for nostalgic and summery vibes about fond memories growing up on England's south coast, and I wonder if you can pick up on all the references! You can also check it out on SoundCloud and Newgrounds if those are you usual haunts, and without further wait, I hope you enjoy, "Brighton"!

Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Next in the news, it’s been another crazy week for radio features for BTTB's new Hopes and Dreams album! Better Than The Book made its debut on Button Down Radio on Sunday, and there’s still a few more chances (5 at the time I post this) to catch “Artificial Ignorance” in the Featured This Week segment before they refresh the playlist this coming Sunday and it enters the general rotation. Check out the poster promoting the show below for all the times it'll be playing throughout the week, tune in now via their website below to have a listen (and catch more great tunes), and thanks so much to Button Down Radio for having BTTB on the show!

https://www.buttondownradio.co.uk/

More radio news next as the opening track from the Hopes and Dreams album "The Hardest Part" has been added to Fresh Picks on idobi Radio too! Tune in via the link below, check out another promotional graphic from the station, and thanks to idobi for having BTTB on the show! Amazing!

ido.bi/player

That makes 4 out of 10 tracks from Hopes and Dreams to have been featured on the radio so far! Amazing times, and a huge thanks to all the shows and stations who have been playing them! Better Than The Book just passed 500 followers on Twitter and 100 likes on Facebook too, so that's pretty cool as well! I’m so happy people are enjoying the new music!

Last of the big pieces of news this week: some major updates to my Patreon page as I announce the first set of "REWARD ARCHIVE" posts covering 4/10/2018 -> 7/8/2019 (including the full Better Than The Book Discography & more) for the convenience of Patreon supporters and new patrons! You can now use the tag "REWARD ARCHIVE" to access posts which summarize and collect all the rewards for your tier from October 4th 2018 to August 7th 2019, instead of having to search through posts manually to find the past rewards for your tier when you sign up! These months' rewards cover the full Better Than The Book discography (as of August 2019), and the posts are there for your convenience so you can pick up all these rewards (Mp3s, WAVs, artwork and more depending in your tier) in one place, including:

• One Small Step EP 
• Heartbeats [The Knife] + GG [Good Game]  
• Meteor Shower 2017 demo, MLGG + Stars Racing {Patreon exclusive}
• Two Years On album  
• Two Years On [Instrumentals] album
• A selection of pre-BTTB demos {Patreon exclusive} 
• Hopes and Dreams album + press photos, lyric sheets, and a behind the scenes studio photo and story     

Become a monthly patron for as little as $1 to access all the music so far as well as all the music to come in the future while you remain a patron! For those of you signed up the $10+ DEMOlition Pigeon tier, you also have access to all the work in progress, demos and behind the scenes monthly articles too including:
  

• A sneak peek at "(The Travelling To See Eva Song)" 
• Journey into "Get A Haircut"
• One Small Step's artwork story + a new mix 
• A deep dive into "Meteor Shower"
• More Better Than The Book artwork stories + another first(ish) draft mix from the new album
• Work in progress artwork for the upcoming Hopes and Dreams album + a demo master for track 06 "Get A Haircut"
• An in depth look into the creation of the Hopes and Dreams album cover (+ demo alternatives)
• A behinds the scenes look into "The Hardest Part"
• A behinds the scenes look into "Artificial Ignorance"
• A behinds the scenes look into "And I Fear"

Check out the full post on Patreon for all the details and thanks so much for supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various music projects on Patreon!
 
https://www.patreon.com/posts/28928832
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Finally this week, some super fun celebrations to share because today is 808 Day! In case you're unaware, 808 Day (in the music tech community at least) celebrates my favourite drum machine of all time, the Roland TR-808 and its legacy on music since its invention in the 1980s!
          The TR-808 has been used on countless albums, in almost every genre imaginable by everyone from Phil Collins, to Marvin Gaye, to Blink-182, to Kanye West, to Limp Blizkit & Linkin Park, just to name a few (the list goes on and on)! In my own music, it was used to enhance every track on Better Than The Book's new Hopes and Dreams album, and was used more recognizably in my debut album as Jabun - Daydream, as well as on countless other tracks in my discography! I love it and to celebrate this year I fired up my more compact Tr-08 (Roland's modern reissue) for some big low end booms, robotic claps, sizzling hi-hats, and the most recognizable yet WTF cowbell sound in sampling history for a little jam which you can watch below
          It's my first time recording something like this live in addition to it being completely unrehearsed and improvised, but all things considered I'm super pleased with how it turned out (I might even make a fully fledged track based on this jam later)! All the sounds are from the Tr-08 with effects provided by the filter, mod delay, decimator, reverb and valve saturation from my Korg ESX Electribe (the big red/pink box), and recorded straight onto my Akai MPC 1000 (no post effects/editing). Hope you enjoy it, more electronic music to come soon, and a happy 808 Day to all!

Hello everyone and hope you're having another great week so far! It's been a crazy busy time here at JabunAudio and the press features and news for Better Than The Book's new Hopes and Dreams album just keep rolling in! I managed a little bit of leisurely recording this week amongst the chaos (more on that later), but in terms of news and things to share this is going to be yet another jam packed blog post so let's get straight into it!

First of all this week, it's time to share another track from Better Than The Book's new Hopes and Dreams album and this time I'm going with track 03: "And I Fear", an honest and no holding back ska punk anthem about the fear of not being able to live up to other people's expectations! Check out the YouTube video below to hear it (visualizer courtesy of Vlad from World Beyond, thanks Vlad!), and you can also find it on SoundCloud and Newgrounds if those are your usual haunts! I hope you enjoy it and without further wait, here's "And I Fear":

Purchase the “Hopes and Dreams” album on Bandcamp:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

Or grab the full album and complete Better Than The Book discography now when you become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Next in this week's news, following Hopes and Dreams' feature on Spinning Thoughts' "Bands People Tweet At Me" Spotify playlist last week, there was a very quick public voted competition for which the top 3 voted bands from the playlist would be played on that week's Spinning Thoughts idobi Radio show, and thanks to all your support, BTTB made it onto the show which funnily enough was episode 182 (the perfect pop-punk number!)! I just happened to wake up miraculously at 5am to catch the show broadcasting live and it was crazy cool! Thanks so much to everyone who voted and supported BTTB, Hopes and Dreams' PR extraordinaire Meg for letting me know about the competition, whoever initially tweeted the band to ST for the playlist, and to Angelo from Spinning Thoughts for having BTTB on the show! You can check out the podcast rerun of the show on the SoundCloud player below (Hopes and Dreams is the first full track after the talking starts and has some surrounding hype from the DJ as well as my own recorded bumper message!), and see the announcement poster and post on Facebook. Super cool!

From BTTB's Californian radio debut we head southwest across the Pacific and back to Australia as Better Than The Book was featured once again on The Ska Show with Beefy on Southern FM! This time Beefy played the 2nd single from Hopes and Dreams "Artificial Ignorance" along with giving another awesome shout out to BTTB and the new album! Thanks so much again Beefy for sharing the jams, and it feels amazing to be playing alongside my personal heroes Less Than Jake, as well as the big old ska boys Madness (both in the 2nd half of the show)! Awesome stuff and you can listen to the podcast re-run of the first half of the July 23rd Ska Show with Beefy below! "Artificial Ignorance" is on -9:09 before the end (it's the 2nd to last track) following with an amazing shout out from Beefy! I hope you enjoy it:

From Australia, we head back to home soil in the UK as on Saturday, Better Than The Book made its debut on the London based internet radio station Tonic Ska Radio! Check out the post below and tune it, they've been playing some great stuff!

And I'm STILL not quite done with all the radio related news! Better Than The Book is also set to make its debut on another UK ska station Button Down Radio this Sunday at 11:30 BST, with a twice daily repeat of the segment for the following week! More details to come for that so head over to the BTTB Facebook page for more updates closer to the time if you're interested, but check out the announcement poster for the show here! Super exciting times!

https://www.facebook.com/BetterThanTheBookUK

Phew... that was a lot of BTTB related news! Getting to the end of this post now so let's finish off with the usual monthly goals and reflections. Here's what was set for July:

1) Release Hopes and Dreams and keep on top of all the promo / press work
2) Try to relax and do some leisurely playing and music projects as much as possible but with no specific targets

Well I can finally say that Hopes and Dreams has been released now and I'm just about keeping up on all the press work, though there seems to be a fair amount left to come (there's STILL stuff in the pipeline I'm not able to share yet)! With regards 2) I have been able to do a bit of relaxing music stuff this month (just about), though I've definitely been feeling that post-release blues and lack of musical energy for the past week or so. Having said that, I did managed to record all the rhythm guitars and bass (some leads too) for a brand new fun cover song I've been meaning to do for YEARS so that's very exciting! Not quite sure when that'll be out but I'll be playing with it as and when I can! Overall (and I'm sure all the press says a good deal for it) it's been a pretty darn good month overall! Time to set some goals for August!

1) Create a "dump" rewards post on Patreon for all the BTTB discography and related rewards
2) Schedule Patreon rewards posts for the next 2 months
3) Have a temporal clean-up on the Patreon page in general (update information etc...)
4) Record lead and harmony vocals (+ the guitar solo?) for the mystery cover song (low priority)

Lots of Patreon related goals this month; "housekeeping" of sorts. It's set to be a busy month with some time off and some other big things going on which I'll reveal in the coming weeks when things are more concrete, but after a busy month of July, I think it'll be nice to have some hopefully less intensive goals while I keep up with all the promotional work for the new album too. Goal 1) is for the convenience of potential new supporters on Patreon while goal 2) is in case I can't get to those posts when the time comes due to things which I'll reveal later. Goal 3) is just a temporary update to the Patreon page. I intend to record a new intro video and do a full spruce up later on before the end of the year, but with the Hopes and Dreams album now out, some of the information there needs updating so it seemed like a good time to start sorting things out. With regards the cover song, I've no idea whether I'll have time to work on it, but goal 4) is the target I'd like to make if I can. Still no ETA on release date but I hope to have it out before the end of the year. Wish me luck and feel free to share your goals in the comments so we can keep each other accountable. Best of luck to you too!

And that just about wraps up this this post! What a post it was! Next week I'll be onto sharing track 05 of the Hopes and Dreams album which is the end of the first side, and I've no doubt there'll be many more pieces of news to share too! I'll likely be busy with the promo work and working on those Patreon related goals next week too so I'm sure it'll be busy (might get some time to record too hopefully). Until the next one, thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Better Than The Book and my various projects!  Have a great rest of the week, enjoy the new music and podcasts and take care!​