Well I’m back at work, but thought I’d write about the awesomeness of listening to some great sounds while road trippin’ around Aotearoa.

My partner and I were extra appreciative of driving with sounds over the holiday break, as we managed to get our car stereo fixed days before we were due to hit the road.

Luckily this Christmas, Santa Claus brought me some sweet new albums, such as Beirut’s The Rip Tide, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s debut, the Amy Winehouse posthumus Lionness album, Down For It by Vorn and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two by the Beastie Boys.

A pretty decent swag in my eyes, and I was keen to hit the road and pump the new tunes.

So what stood up to keeping us musically entertained while we rolled our way to the very top of the Coromandel?

Well, we went against stereotypically listening to something like The Black Seeds or Fat Freddy’s Drop while driving up the ‘mandel and chucked in Beastie Boys and turned it up.

This album is so great, the Beastie Boys just don’t age, but they’re not scared to experiment from one album to the next.

Opening with Make Some Noise (and if you look it up on Youtube there’s an awesome 30-minute video to go with it), you are set for your road tripping in style. Tracks like Too Many Rappers are just asking for the bass to be turned up, and heads to be nodded along to the beat while chewing up the asphalt. Made even better with Nas featuring on the track. Talk about NY hip hop royalty.

Another favourite is Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win, featuring Santigold and with a fantastically skanky dub beat.

I also discovered on my summer travel holidays that the Beastie Boys have previously released an all-instrumental album, The In Sound From Way Out!, which also deserves a listen.

We also jammed with some UMO while on the road, which is a fantastic album from start to finish.

Then there are those times on the road where you scroll through your iPod for ‘those’ songs – the random terrible songs that you keep on there just for nostalgia. So they got some air time during a particularly boring stretch along the Desert Road when I decided it was car karaoke (caraoke?) time.

Are there any albums you just have to break out on the road?