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Hi everyone and hope you had a great December, Christmas, New Years and Holiday season! It's been a heckin' super busy time over here, so much so that I've fallen behind on my pre-scheduled YouTube video recording! Fortunately I prepared videos up until the end of January in case of busy times, but there's going to be a lot of catching up to do this coming month, and man oh man it's looking to be an even busier time to come! Speaking of which, with Better Than The Book's big single release earlier this week (more on that in a moment), there'll be no extra Patreon rewards this month so everyone's news will be together in one post again. Should be back to the usual jam for February, and with that, let's get on with the news for the month!
Firstly, it's been just a few days since the launch but things are already looking great for the first single "Plot Holes" from Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd full length album "Side Character In My Own Life"! If you've not already heard it check it out on YouTube, or on Bandcamp if you want to pick up a copy or pre-order the album now:
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/album/side-character-in-my-own-life
Plot Holes was one of the first tracks to be written for the upcoming Side Character In My Own Life album, and like most of the album was written back in 2020 / early 2021 (Track 05 "Rewrite" was rewritten in 2023). With the world in lockdown, some questionable characters pulling the strings, not to mention some horrible things going on on top of that, it was a tense and emotional era and it's no wonder that the world's collective consciousness was at breaking point. Plot Holes was written to help process all that was going on, about how some uncomfortable realities had to be faced, and how at the time (and still now) the world just didn't seem to make sense anymore. I hope you find it enjoyable, relatable and that it brings some much needed catharsis, power and motivation to you however you experienced these past 5 years! The Side Character In My Own life album is more or less a snapshot of that time in my life with another 5 years of performance, writing, audio engineering and production experience under my belt which I really believe is my best collective release to date! With the album art and many other things still left to sort out, I don't have a concrete release date planned for the album just yet but I'm hoping for the first half of this year without rushing things. I was determined to get something out before 2024 was over though, and Plot Holes seemed like the best foot forward so to speak. The album goes through many style shifts and motions, but I think this set's the overall musical tone nicely! Bandcamp pre-orders are now open along with the Plot Holes (Radio Edit) single ready to download, and I'll be updating the page with the pre-release singles as they're released + artwork, lyrics and descriptions in due time. Of course the current art is just a placeholder for what's to come, and there is a LOT of new music to come! Check out the track list for the new album below: https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/album/side-character-in-my-own-life Better Than The Book - Side Character In My Own Life 01 - 2020 Was A Write-off, But What Comes Next? 02 - Side Character In My Own Life 03 - Mood Swings 04 - Red Kite 05 - Rewrite 06 - Don't Be Too Hard On Yourself 07 - Hold Me Tight 08 - Bump In The Night 09 - Plot Holes 10 - You'll Never Be Too Old For This Bonus Tracks 11 - Hearts Racing Backwards 12 - Plot Holes (Alternative Version) 13 - Hold Me Tight (Non-Acoustic) 14 - Side Character In My Own Life (Acoustic) + Additional Radio Edits for Tracks 07, 08, 09 & 10 Written, performed and produced by Nick Standing [Jabun] Recorded, mixed and mastered at JabunAudio by Nick Standing [Jabun] Artwork, images and photography by Nick Standing [Jabun] No generative A.I. tools were used in the creation of this album. More album credits and special thanks are to come but for now I'd like to extend an immediate thanks to my family and friends (both online and offline) for their support and a big thanks to the current supporters on Patreon with extra mention to $10+ patrons: Nathan Puray, and Michael White! Thank you all so much for your help and support in making my musical dreams a reality! You folks are amazing! Of course my supporters on Patreon are celebrating today with the full download package of the Plot Holes (Radio Edit) single which includes Mp3s (+ WAVs for the $10 patrons) and full sized placeholder art! If any of that sounds good to you, then consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 today, and remember you'll be getting the full back-catalogue of rewards for your tier when you join, including the full Better Than The Book, Jabun and Nick Standing discographies, bonus Patreon exclusives and much more! Find out more below: $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/116513608 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/116513612 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding And a big thanks to everyone who's listened and shared the music so far! Not even a week after launch and Plot Holes has already been streamed well over 1000 times (almost on Newgrounds alone) and even received a Front Page Feature Award on Newgrounds too! Thanks so much for the love peeps, and I'm sure the rest of the album is going to blow your socks off too! Check out the Newgrounds stream for Plot Holes below: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1387749 Onto other recent music releases, all the listening parties have now been completed for November's Jabun - Nephology album and all the tracks have been playlisted on YouTube and Newgrounds now, as well as the album being up on Spotify too! With over 6 hours total of listening party streaming time for this album it's been the longest release party yet and thanks so much to everyone who joined and really made it a memorable launch for Jabun's Nephology! Check out the cloudwatching livestream playlist below and the Nephology album on Bandcamp if you've not heard it already:
https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/nephology
Onto some Christmas and Holiday funtimes news now, this year was the first one at my wife Eva and I's new house and we were hosting which made for a busy challenge but super enjoyable time with close family. As usual gifts were exchanged and some fun highlights included a toy pig from Battersea Power Station (In reference to Pink Floyd), Tickets to Iron Maiden and the 40th Anniversary addition of Iron Maiden's Powerslave album on vinyl (the title track of which was the first guitar solo I ever learnt and performed live) which also has this cool feature where when you play it under a strobe light it shows an animated loop for each of the tracks on the album (super cool), the Mario Bros Wonder game which has been some very silly multiplayer fun, and Eva and I both getting eachother the same supposedly discontinued flavour of our favourite instant noodles! Good times all around and thanks my dear family, I'm looking forward to the next visit soon! On top of that, my twin Eamon was up to his usual dank mashup madness and made yet another Christmas album this year! It ended up being a 12 days of Christmas countdown of sorts on his YouTube channel and is as messed up as it is heartfelt! Check it out below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xtXIGAoNAQ&list=PLwEpjDbB6TAHQ7Khc1Nq5wCtnM-f0rUVc&index=54 Onto Studio updates, with a few trips back down south in December + my family coming up to visit for Christmas, I FINALLY managed to move the rest of my equipment up into the new studio! Apart from the family piano and my very first Marshall guitar and bass amps which are staying down south, it's the first time EVER that all my instruments and equipment have been under the same roof and in the same room! Some notable additions include my BIG bass amp (an Ashdown EVO EVO II 500 + 4x10 cab), my first bass and guitar, a Squier Vintage Modified (and modified again) Jazz Bass, and stock Yamaha Pacifica 112 I picked up at a McDonalds car part from eBay at age 14, my trusty balalaika, and tenor saxaflute (Bamboo saxophone) which I've been making a new effort to play now that I can be as noisy and terribly sounding as I want (and it's going "well" so far)! There's still A LOT of stuff to sort out in the studio with a massive pile of mostly CDs and manga boxed up against the back wall now, but it's finally ALL HERE and available to record and jam now; for the first time ever! It's a great feeling and I'm sure it'll be even better once I get things a bit more sorted and less cluttered soon! Next it's onto the YouTube videos for the month and although as mentioned I wasn't able to keep up with my recording, I've still managed to release the usual 2 a week videos on top of the new music! This month we said hello to the new studio with some build updates, and some jams! Here's the updated main playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm
And here's the full list of videos below:
Next month will feature some amp repairs and testing, some more studio build updates and jams and back to some synth stuff too! Thanks for sticking around and watching and hope you enjoy what's to come! Finally as it's the first post of the year, I thought it'd be nice to reflect on the year gone by, celebrate the successes, reflect on goals, and set some new ones for 2025! It's been a heck of a busy year, not so much on the music release schedule this time, but more preparing for the future and things to come! Speaking of releasing stuff though, 2024 was my first full calendar year of releasing 2 videos a week on YouTube, and crazy as I thought it was, 104 videos later, I'm still going and the JabunAudio channel has surpassed 500 subscribers too! That's something to celebrate! On top of that, although we unfortunately didn't make it to the stage this year due to injury and busy life stuff (more on that later), the Better Than The Book live band got back together for its first full band practices since January 2020 which was amazing fun! Hoping to get back to it in the new year when we can! And speaking of BTTB, although the album wasn't released just yet, master audio has been finished for BTTB's upcoming 3rd full-length album Side Character In My Own Life and the first single Plot Holes just made it to release before the year was out too! Additionally Jabun released its 6th album/EP project Nephology in November with a tonne of live streaming party fun, and moving onto collaborator news Sif Savery's Tales of Zale: Flicking lights short film reached over a million views on YouTube, I mastered the madness monster of a rap track "Smack a Fish (Motha Sharka)" by eterniTRex, and kept up with my yearly INKtober contribution to Cyberdevil's challenge with the beat for B-35 Bomber on Newgrounds. On top of all this (and likely much to the disruption of the above), as well as a tonne of long overdue or unexpected equipment fixes and maintenance, Eva and I finally managed to buy our own place including my very own studio space! It's not quite set up yet, but it's getting there! To top things off for a year of celebration, I was very pleased to find that my custom NOISE oscillator for the KORG NTS-1 finally made it's way onto the official KORG user oscillator software list! That's pretty darn neat! Phew, what a year it's been! Kinda looks like a lot when it's all piled up like that! In terms of the (audio related) goals I actually set, it wasn't super successful from a completion point of view mainly due to logistical and health problems and the other busy life stuff above, but things have been progressing slowly but surely, and technically I did put out a Jabun album, just not the one I was aiming to on the goals list (as usual)! There's still time for all of these though, so with that I think I'll be reprising the same goals for 2025: 1) Release the upcoming Better Than The Book album! 2) Finish recording the next Jabun album 3) Play my first live shows as Better Than The Book or Jabun And set an additional goal 4) to finish getting the new studio set up. Goal 1) is definitely doable and I can still dream about the rest! Wish me luck and I hope you all have great years to come too! That about wraps things up for this post! The next thing I'll be doing on Patreon is updating all the Reward Archive posts so expect a post about that before the month is over and hopefully we should be back the usual reward schedule for February! With the hype train started for BTTB's new album it's going to be a busy few months ahead and I've gotta get my paint brush out soon to start on the artwork for that too! SO MANY THINGS TO DO! Until the next post I hope you enjoy all the new music and videos and thanks as always for supporting Jabun, Better Than The Book, and my various projects for another year! Let's make 2025 the best one yet and take care!
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