All posts tagged: music

It has been a while…

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It has been a while. Quite a long while, actually. The last time I posted I told the world how I wasn’t going to be so hard on myself for pulling out of the Berlin Marathon last September. Pulling out wasn’t fun, especially as we had booked flights and accommodation – but rather than face limping around the course, my boyfriend and I decided to go and spend a few days splayed around the pool at the incredible Soho House Berlin instead. So, why haven’t I written for a while? I’ve had this blog for almost a decade – yes, 10 years! When I started tapping away on my now vintage white Macbook all those years ago, the new age bloggers and what have more recently become termed influencers, were probably still getting grazes on their knees in the playground and eating lumpy custard and vanilla sponge in the school canteen. It makes me feel old, but not in a bad way as you might expect. Truth be told, when Instagram took off I was …

Was 24 Hours at Bestival Long Enough?

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You might think that 24 hours isn’t enough to enjoy the offering of a four day festival. But let me tell you, a couple of weekends ago, me and my friend Pippa played the Bestival game and I’m pretty sure we won. You see, what we have come to learn over our year of friendship is that neither of us do things by halves; so as soon as we arrived on site, we popped up the tent, put on our most colourful ensemble and quickly slopped our way through the ever growing mud slides to the festival arena. Taking place for the first time at it’s new Lulworth Castle home, the undulating festival site, also home to Camp Bestival, is smaller than the Isle of White site I came to know so well over the last eleven years. Featuring a colourfully lit National Trust castle backdrop, numerous mini stages and the obligatory exploratory tents that literally turned frowns upside down, I think Bestival fit in just nicely. To me, Bestival is as much about the experience as …

Festival Review – Electric Castle, Romania

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“What are you going to write about?” asked Alex. I thought about it for a second and when I responded, he looked surprised. “I don’t know, because it hasn’t happened yet”, I smiled as I melted into my seat. Lucy and I had just stopped the wrong bus in its tracks and bundled ourselves on, not so elegantly pulling our suitcase and bumping into poor unsuspecting passengers on the way to a couple of empty seats at the back. The boiling hot bus, which seemed to have rolled straight out of the 70’s, was full of subdued festival goers on the way to one of Romania’s biggest festivals, Electric Castle. And Alex? He was my new Romanian friend from Romania’s non-official second capital, Cluj-Napoca. It was the truth. I could have guessed and said that I was going to interview a few bands, or that I was there to review specific bands, but no. I was there to review the experience – and if my previous festival experiences are anything to go by, I knew …

Dancing in Transylvania: Electric Castle Festival, 12th-16th July

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It has taken me four years to realise that to have fun; the real kind, not the ‘how can I make myself look like I’m having fun when really I’m just an anxiety attack waiting to happen’ kind of fun, I need to do two things. Number 1 – Just Say No. The FOMO is real, people. But it doesn’t need to be. It took a 40 year old journalist I met recently to tell me that getting over FOMO was one of the best things he had ever done. “It takes time, but it will come”, he said to me as we departed a ski lift on the top of a mountain in Mayrhofen. We were at Snowbombing festival and he was there to cover the festival for an online music magazine. He was having fun, not drinking, skiing loads every day, and most importantly left the festival with an average of 40 hours’ sleep during the week. I, on the other hand, drank my body weight in Jägermeister and beer, danced until 5am …

Cadbury Dairy Milk Enhance Chocolate Experience

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What Mindlab released a report finding that sound dimensions – amplitude, frequency, volume and pitch – can significantly enhance the perception of taste. Inspired by these results, Cadbury Dairy Milk teamed up with London Contemporary Orchestra to develop its first ever music album “The Sound of Flavourites”. The tracks have been specifically designed to enhance the eating experience of the nine Cadbury Dairy Milk flavours. Where On the tube, at your desk, on your sofa…..wherever tickles your fancy. Experience Being a natural sceptic, I was a little hesitant about the validity of the report. Can sound really improve the taste? Then I realised I was tasked to eat a variety of Cadbury’s chocolate while listening to music. Who am I to question neuroscience? I took part in my own little experiment with some friends in the office. Funnily enough, they were all eager to get started. The line-up: Cadbury Dairy Milk Oreo, Rocky Mallow Road and Daim. Next, we went to the Spotify list to sample the sounds. Track 2 ‘Daimond City’ accompanied Daim. This …