Music that wont make your fellow travelers hate you... probably

So you've bought yourself one of those tiny pop-up speakers and are all set to provide the soundtrack to your travels, but what should be on your ipod? You might be into heavy metal, carnage drum & bass or the sort hip-hop with angry rappers, but unless you're already quite familiar with your room-mates these genres are unlikely to make you many new friends in a hostel. This is a guide to avoiding any awkward social situations that might arise from clashing music tastes.

I can't guarantee everyone will like these suggestions, but hopefully they wont make anyone hate you. Some of them you might not have heard of before, others you definitely should have...

I've tried to arrange them in a vaguely chronological order, but my favourites are near the end.

(I don't get any money from these links by the way)

Sunny day-times

For sunny days on the beach you really want some reggae, but it's best not to bang on Mr Marley strait away unless you are also wearing a hat in the colours of the Jamaican flag, have been cultivating your deadlocks since you were ten and are just about to light up the biggest joint anyone has ever seen... Nobody else can get away with 'One Love' in quite the same way.

Here's a couple of alternatives:

Easy Star All-Stars are best known for covering popular albums in a reggae and dub style. Here's a good example...

Laid Blak at Boomtown Fair.

Laid Blak, originating from Bristol, always seem to get the crowd going at festivals and certainly aren't a bad bet for chilling out when the sun is shining.

I've seen them perform 'It's a Pity' with a couple of different female singers. It's different every time, but always catchy.




If reggae isn't your thing, maybe John Butler will float your boat? John Butler Trio- John Butler started out by busking in Australia, was joined by a drummer and a bassist and is now so successful that it isn't uncommon to hear him referred to as the "million dollar hippie". I don't feel like he's sold out too much though and you can't argue with this guitar...
 

I stole this from his Soundcloud.

Fed up of acoustic sounds? Bondax are cute (like a couple of over-enthusiastic puppies cute- I've never seen anybody look so cheerful when they're DJing) and this is Justin Martin ->

What's not to love?








...or try this? It's just a little bit magical.

For road-trips 

If you're asked to choose music for a long journey, you'll want something to help the driver stay awake. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble will do the job nicely! They put on a pretty fantastic live performance too.

...or maybe a classic?

I'm sorry, but I can't choose between these two- you can't beat The Rolling Stones for road-trips.

Mike Stroud and Evan Mast, from New York, form the experimental electronic rock duo Ratatat. This song is particularly fantastic...

The 3rd time...

Evening down time

A sure winner with the majourity of laid back loungers is always going to be Bonobo. Simon Green, as his mother calls him, has been on the music scene for over a decade and now, even with five albums under his belt, is probably only just reaching the height of his influence. If you get a chance to see him live, make sure he is going to have his band with him and you're sure to be mesmerised by their clever concoctions of electronic and acoustic sounds. I've managed to see them three times now, once travelling to Amsterdam especially, and I'm still keen for a chance at a fourth.

There's Bonobo there- trying to hide in the background.

Depending how hipster you're trying to be, Bonobo may be a little too well-known these days. In that case you should try Demain...




...and enjoy the satisfaction of being able to tell your new bohemian friends that you found him through an obscure little blog and a Soundcloud link.

This video is awesome too (can you guess what it is?)...

.

14th at Glastonbury last year.

Maybe you'd rather test the water with some soulful female vocals?

They're still pretty small, but with Tracey Duodu's voice and Tom Barber's production, 14th have been recognised by more established artists such as Bonobo, The XX and Jakwob, so I'm hoping it's only a matter of time until they make it big-time.

To set 'the mood'

Are you trying to get laid?! Maybe this won't work so well if you are a pasty little white boy/girl, but India Arie has an amazing voice.



My friend Bryony and I are going to see Chet Faker in London soon. I can't wait! I like him even better for looking like a bit of a tramp. Apparently born 'Nicholas James Murphy', he decided he needed to play under a stage name after people came to his shows thinking he was the already established musician named Nick Murphy (any idea who that is?!). 'Chet Faker' is a tribute to the deceased jazz musician Chet Baker.

After a heavy night

Coming in from a 'wild' night out, you're going to want something gentle.

Skyphos is an up-and-coming* producer from Holland. I love most of his music, but this remix of Nils Fram's 'More & Less' is perfect for winding down before bed time. If you like some classical music, Nils Fram is certainly worth a listen on his own too.



Everything Jamie XX touches turns to gold...

I'll leave you with this. If you haven't heard of Maribou State, then you really need to watch this video.

That's it for now. Maybe I'll collect another selection for a sequel some time soon.

Thanks Bryony, Sam, Steve Edwards, Chalky and of course Dan for sharing their fantastic music taste with me over the years.

*hopefully!

You might also like... The Street-Art of Stokes Croft, Bristol
or... Melbourne, its Street Art and why it would be cool to live there

Trying to get lost on Islay

I have no sense of direction. Seriously, plonk me down anywhere in the world without a map or compass and I will walk around in circles for an eternity until I find somebody helpful. I don't always exactly enjoy being lost, but it has come to be an expected part of my daily existence. Even after three years of living in Southampton, I still only knew very certain routes from place to place.... I find it hard to navigate my way around shopping centres, forget what way I came in a door and head back out in the opposite direction and sometimes even get a little bit lost when swimming underwater in a swimming-pool.*

You would imagine that all of this is a bit of a handicap while I'm travelling alone (and sometimes it is awful), but recently I have developed a game. It's very simple...

1. In a new city wander down whichever roads/alleyways take your fancy (the windier the better).
2. Keep on doing so for half an hour, maybe an hour if you're feeling brave/very bored.
3. Now simply try and find your way back.

I started off playing this game in places I supposedly knew very well (Dorchester, Southampton, driving around the single lanes near my old village in Dorset...), but soon became cocky enough to try it abroad. In Marrakesh there was no chance of me finding my way anywhere, so that wasn't a good beginning, but the small blue-tinged town of Chefchaouen was ideal. Ten minutes of walking in random directions and it took two hours to find my way back to the hostel. Since then I've explored Seville, Lisbon and Porto in the same way and am keen to have another go the next time I'm alone in a big town.

Whenever that might be...

The Dower House- dilapidated home of my parents and my current abode.

For now that isn't very easy to organise on the small island of Islay in Scotland. Instead, I tried the same thing in our little car and drove inland along all the roads I didn't recognise. Unfortunately I couldn't get lost, there aren't enough roads, but at least now I know where they all lead.

Here are a few photos from my afternoon's exploration... 

This is the little car that my parents are letting me use while I'm living up here- it's not exactly cut out for the pot-holes and mud swamps we try to get through sometimes.

A village I'd never noticed before- Ballygrant apparently.

Thanks for reading- if you're lucky I'll write you a slightly more informative post next time. :)

You might also like Eight amazing seaside spots on the Isle of Islay.

*As my university lifesaving friends would testify after I once managed to swim into a wall during a competition.

Sydney and its surroundings... a medley

Over the last week, I've helped prepare for and attended a wedding* in the Sutton Forest, spent a couple of days discovering the area around Jervis Bay, enjoyed a family Christmas in Sydney, explored the city a little, visited the Blue Mountains and even tried my best to surf at Manly Beach.

So yes, it's been a bit manic, but we've found some fantastic places, all of which are fairly easily accessible from Sydney...

Fitzroy Falls-

On our way from the wedding venue to Jervis Bay, we stopped for a little walk along to Fitzroy Falls. The water itself wasn't doing much, but look at the view!

Jervis Bay and around-

Doing the tourist thing on the golf course.

Jervis Bay is around 200km down the coast from Sydney. You could hitch, we just bypassed it on our way down to Melbourne as we knew we were coming back.

Dan's parents, Rod and Janet, were kind enough to take us to stay in a house near Jervis Bay just after the wedding. This gave us a little time to explore Booderee National Park and even spot our first kangaroos.

Everybody keeps telling me that kangaroos are everywhere in Australia, but despite looking quite desperately, we hadn't yet managed to spot any. As with the koalas however, I was a little embarrassed by my initial excitement as we came across more and more over the next couple of days. If you're in the area and haven't had any luck yet, a sure place to find them is on the golf course at Sanctuary Point.

Being driven around in a hire car, it was pretty easy for us to find some of the nicest beaches, but if you don't
have that luxury, there are enough people around that it shouldn't be too hard to get a lift.

My personal favorite was Cave Beach. Being a little walk away from the carpark seems too weed out many of the area's less intrepid tourists, leaving us of the more robust variety to relax in peace, swim in the surf and on this occasion ponder the meaning of these aboriginal objects (any ideas?) standing in the sand.

Cave Beach

Green Patch

Boo!

Other uncrowded beaches include Green Patch and Murray Beach, which are both similar in their pale sand, clear water and lining of forest. From Murray Beach, you can walk to Governors Head and look across to Bowen Island  to spot the little penguins. One of our hitchhiking drivers told us that if you go here in the evening you'll see them fishing. We debated swimming across to get a better view, but I decided that if we were going to be stupid enough to face the possibility
 of having to have the coastguards called out, then I'd rather Dan's parents weren't there to witness it.

Hyams Beach, recommended to us by Carmel, was a little less quiet than the others we found, but (according to the locals) it has the whitest sand on Earth. In fact, on an overcast day when the sky and sea are just as light as the sand, the whole effect is very surreal and you feel as if you are wandering around in some sort of blindingly bright dream.

Hyams Beach- I had to shut out a lot of the light as my camera was also blinded!

My main advise for visiting Hyams beach, other than trying not to go in holiday season, is to wear sunglasses as I'm pretty sure I've gained a wrinkle from the squinting.

Hyams Beach

A family Christmas in Sydney-

Being  in Sydney for Christmas was strange as I've never been away from my family/England for these festivities, but Bridget's family made us really welcome and it was interesting to see how it's done on the other side of the globe. Comfortingly, excluding the temperature, the day was a similar whirlwind of the present exchanging, game playing and glutenous eating that I'm used to back home. The all-important dinner, lovingly prepared by a couple of hardworking ladies, was a little different than what we would traditionally have in Britain, but very tasty and it's pretty obvious why salad is more popular than roast potatoes in this heat. It was hard enough to move afterwards even without the pigs in blankets!

There were also a couple of nice traditions that I hadn't encountered before... firstly, and most excitingly for a poverty stricken vagabond like myself, was the distribution of scratchcards to everyone at the table. The rules are that if you win over $500 (I think) then you share it with the table, but anything less than that you keep. I WON $10!!! So yes, that was very exciting indeed. The other tradition, was to hide a set of fortune coins in everyone's Christmas pudding. Now, I've come across people who hide one coin before, but this set, with different pieces for things like 'marriage', 'wealth' and 'peace' make everyone at the table feel like they are the lucky one (Dan and I were happy to avoid the marriage coin- there have been enough comments since Ben and Bridget's wedding as it was!). They didn't set the pudding on fire, but then Australians aren't known for wasting their alcohol.

Exploring the city on Boxing Day- so much blue sky!

The Blue Mountains-

The view from the Three Sisters lookout platform.

 A shiny bug! :)

The endangered Blue Mountains Tree Gnome.

Katoomba is a two hour ($12 return) train journey from Sydney Central.

Dan and I had one spare day before we had to fly out, so we set out 'early'**. A day isn't long enough to do the Blue Mountains justice, but we had a good (if a bit sweaty) time walking from the Three Sisters, down the Giant Steps (there's  more than 800 of them), through the rainforest below and then up more steps the other side. The Three Sisters lookout platform was absolutely rammed with tourists (it is holiday season after all), but as usual, the further we walked, the less people we found,so that seems to be the way to escape.

I'd imagine you'd have a much more peaceful time elsewhere in the Blue Mountains if you had longer to explore. It would also be a great place to hike and camp as there are plenty of trails and alternative places to explore.

The end of our time in Oz (for now)...

Back in Sydney, Ben and Bridget brightened our end of holiday blues by taking us for an early morning surf on Manly Beach. The waves were pretty small, but as the only person there who really had no clue about what they were doing, I was secretly glad... Manly seems like a pretty cool area of town to live in (I can imagine commuting to work on the ferry across Sydney Harbour would be a difficult thing to get tired of) so I hope Ben and Bridget move there eventually and we can visit again!

An accidental but (I thought) rather artistic shot of the surf at Manly Beach. I'm sorry but my battery died soon after!

Now, going a little stir crazy in Sydney airport (which has free wi-fi by the way), I'm tentatively considering how feasible hitchhiking around the whole of Australia would be. Next time I'm in the area...


*Dan's brother Ben was getting married to the lovely Bridget (hence the actual important reason behind our trip). Congratulations guys, your wedding was beautiful and I'm so happy I was able to be a part of it.
**Ok, I think it might have been more like 10.30am...

Do you have any other suggestions for escaping the city? Leave a comment below. :)