Track 03 "And I Fear" from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams is now streaming, Hopes and Dreams featured on idobi Radio, another Ska Show to share, BTTB premiers on Tonic Ska Radio (and more) + setting and reflecting on more goals!

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!​