I'm in a hotel room in Dakar waiting to catch my flight back to London. I spent the last three weeks traveling and recording around Senegal accompanied by my friend Matt and with the help of local guide Youssou Badji. Against my expectations, we managed to visit most of the country and all of the bigger national parks and reserves.

I have over 500GB worth of recordings, photos and videos and I very much look forward to delving into this trove once I get back into the studio. Until then I can share a couple of recordings and a few photos I managed to upload so far.

A completely new experience to me was recording a band. We stayed at a camping spot in the Desert of Lompoul, where a local Djembe band played excellent music by the campfire at night. I took advantage of this and recorded them, and here's a short bit from one of their performances.

One of the highlights of the trip was our stay in Niokolo Koba national park. This is an immense area covered in dense tropical forests and home to a huge variety of wildlife. Every evening we were treated to the sounds of Baboons arguing over the best places to spend the night. Here's a short excerpt, downloads enabled:

I've also been dabbling in photography for a while. Whenever my gear is out recording I like to go out and stalk wildlife trying to get close-up shots. I'm still working on this but I'm quite happy with what I managed to shoot. As an added bonus this helps me ID species much more easily. Here's a few shots from this trip:

This has been an extremely enjoyable experience, albeit a little exhausting. I will need a few days to relax, but afterwards I will write a blog post going into much more detail and sharing more content. Stay tuned and let me know if you enjoyed this!