​January 2022 Patreon rewards: "Merry Christmas The Dings 2017" EP, a WIP demo of BTTB's "Plot Holes" for the $10 patrons, a brand new track and teaser for the new World Beyond "Revolt" single + some updates and goal setting/reflecting!

Hi everyone and hope you had a great festive period last month and a fun New Years! It's the first week of 2022 and time for some more Patreon rewards, and following from last month's "Unwrap With Caution" EP, I'll be sharing another (mostly) acoustic festive EP from 2017, this time a present for my parents "Merry Christmas The Dings 2017"! As with the last, this is a Patreon Exclusive download at the time I'm writing this, and hope you enjoy it! More updates and another brand new World Beyond track to share this month too, but let's start with the EP.

"Merry Christmas The Dings 2017" is a 6 track collection of cover songs I'd sing back when I lived with my parents. It was recorded at the same time as "Unwrap With Caution" and apart from the lack of rap vocals follows a similar style and philosophy of production! I'm really pleased with these, and really do recon they're some of my best cover performances, recordings and productions to date (especially the final track)! The track listing is as follows:  

01 Perfect - Alice Cooper
02 Aliens Exist - Blink-182 
03 Wish You Were Here -Pink Floyd 
04 For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield 
05 Impression That I Get - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones 
06 Hurt - Nine Inch Nails / Johnny Cash

All Patreon supporters will be recieving an exclusive download of the EP this month, and if you're a $10+ patron, you also have an exclusive WIP demo of Better Than The Book's "Plot Holes" (with rough vocals and horns) to look forward to (from the upcoming 3rd full length album)! If that sounds good to you then join me on Patreon to read more and download the rewards below as well as check out all of this month's project updates in full. Remember you'll be recieving all past rewards for you tier too when you sign up so check out the archives to see everything you can catch up on and hope to see you there!

$1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/59947451
$10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/59947446
Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842
Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

And you can listen to all tracks from "Merry Christmas The Dings 2017" over on YouTube. Check out the playlist below:

https://www.jabunaudio.com/merry-christmas-2017.html

Onto this month's project updates, I've been swamped with upcoming collaborative projects (more on that in the moment), and away for the festive period so I've unfortunately not been able to work on Better Than The Book or Jabun at all in December. I can say with certainty though that the delays will be well worth it once you hear what I've been up to and although I can't reveal all right now, I can give you a glimpse of one of these upcoming projects below!

Vlad at World Beyond has as usual been working a crazy amount and in December released the teaser and opening track for our upcoming collaborative single, a vocal version of "Revolt" from the 2018 album "Nobody Asked For This So I Did It"! I'm not playing on this extended intro track, but have been working hard with Vlad as his second set of ears and production mind to make this the best possible hybrid orchestral rock single we've released together to date! This single is extra special to me too as it's the first time (as I recall) that Vlad is singing on one of his tracks! I'll be joining him for the main single on guitar, bass and my own chords, but until then and without further wait, here is the opening to the "Revolt" single: "Nobody is Safe"! Enjoy and get hyped!

​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6x9rzpiyZo

And you can read more December updates from World Beyond including an amazing cover of the Halo Theme, some giveaways, and more below:

https://www.worldbeyond.net/2021/12/happy-holidays-halo-theme-cover.html

Finally for the updates this month, my twin Eamon got me a BOSS Blues Driver BD-2 guitar pedal for Christmas so expect to hear some more Green Day and The Pillows inspired guitar stuff in future recordings (it sounds very nice)! Thanks Eamon! It's looking to be another busy month of collaboration ahead but I hope to be back to some more Better Than The Book and Jabun by February! So much stuff in the works at the moment and I can't wait to show you soon!

For the last thing this month it's time to reflect on goals, and with no formal goals set last month and it being the beginning of the year, let's reflect on the goals for 2021 I set a year ago! Here's what I had listed:

1) Keep doing what I do, and keep getting better at it!
2) Make 2021 the best financial year for JabunAudio yet! (I can only try)
3) Release Jabun's 3rd album
4) Finish writing and start recording Better Than The Book's next album
5) Play the first BTTB live gig (still hoping)
6) Release or at least finish recording another (4th) Jabun album?
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And given the uncertain year and another one mostly in lockdown I think things went pretty well! 2021 saw the release of Jabun's 3rd album "Generation Supernova", my first feature in a compilation album with The Ska Show With Beefy's "Save The Ska Show Complilation", BTTB & Jabun's collaorative single "1314" which I proposed with (and Eva said yes), along with an Inktober collaboration with Cyberdevil "No Cap Life", a cello performance on World Beyond's Tribute to the Frostpunk game, as well as an Apple Bottom Jeans Meme with my twin, Eamon, and on a less musical side of things, the creation and great reception of my custom NOISE oscilator for Korg's NTS-1 Synth! There is still SO much in the pipeline I can't reveal just yet too, but safe to say I think goal 1) (and 3)) are a resounding success!

Updates-to-the-studio-wise, along with the KORG Volca Modular and NTS-1 which you'l hear in the next Jabun album, there's been a tonne of guitar pedal rig expansions last year with the addition of the Sonicake Sonic IR speaker simulator (thanks Eva) and Digitech Whammy V, both of which you'll be hearing on the new BTTB album, as well as the 40th Anniversay of my favourite guitar pedal the BOSS Super Overdrive SD-1, the new Blues Driver BD-2 from Eamon, and my custom repurposed spring reverb unit made from recycled organ parts, the "Vintage 'Verb"! Not a lot of gaps left to fill in my armoury so I really don't expect to be adding much more in 2022, though there's just a few bit I'll be keeping an eye out for on eBay as usual (come on organ bass pedals)! We shall see!

Back to goals, 4) & 6) are going smoothly with Jabun's next album just awaiting mastering and the admin / artwork side of things, and BTTB's next album just awaiting vocals, horns, cello and a few other production extras before it's time for mixing! Unfortunatly with another mostly locked down year and leaning to the safer side of things, no BTTB gigs have been played just yet (5) and 2021 wasn't the best financial year for JabunAudio (2) though I must say things are getting much better in the past few month, despite the slight step away and more part-time approach I've had to take with it. All in all a good year I recon, so let's set some new goals for 2022:

1) Keep doing what I do, and keep getting better at it!
2) Make 2022 the best financial year (for JabunAudio?) yet! (As always I can only try)
3) Release Jabun's 4th album
4) Release or at least finish recording Better Than The Book's next album
5) Play the first BTTB live gig (still hoping)

Very similar to last year! There is a 5th(+) Jabun project still in the works since 2019 too, but I'll be doing my best to concentrate on finishing Better Than The Book's upcoming projects in my free time (whether that is) and we'll see how everything goes. Wish me luck!

With it looking like another busy month of collaboration ahead, I'll not set any goals (that I can reveal publicly) here, though I'll aim just to get all the silly beginning-of-the-year admin stuff out of the way (cleaning up emails and changing the website dates etc...) and hopefully I'll be back to set some personal creative goals in February. Hope you have a great and productive month (and year) ahead too!
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That's it for this post and set of rewards and wishing you an amazing 2022 to come! I'm not 100% sure what I'll be sharing in the next set of Patreon rewards but it'll certainly be another Exclusive Download musical present of some kind so I hope you're looking forward to it (+ another Jabun demo for the $10 patrons). I'm sure there'll be more collaborative news to share as well! Until then, I hope you have a great start to the year, take care, and thanks as always for supporting my music however you can! All the best and see you in the next one!