Kristen Sinclair

Source: spindlemagazine.com Back in 1980, a rather festive Jona Lewie sang about stopping the cavalry. Some thirty-five years later, currently unsigned London-based songstress Ella On The Run is touching on the same subject, but with a little less tinsel and injecting a lot more electrifying dance-pop panache.             Purring to life with an eerie, almost tribal intro, the Berklee College of Music graduate’s latest offering, ‘Cavalry’, marries electro-pop beats and haunting vocals with a certain edginess à la Foxes, BANKS and La Roux. With a nod to classic eighties synthpop without wallowing in its own nostalgia, Ella’s voice has all the power to carry the biggest house tracks but with a danceable, laid-back quality; what Clash Music has dubbed “attitude-laden pop against cutting edge production”. Simply brimming with massive remix potential (ahem, BBC Radio 1), the soaring, climactic chorus of ‘Cavalry’ sees Ella chant, “ Bang bang bang, do you feel the echo on the d

Issue 9 of Quarter Beat, October 2013 (Source: thecathedralquarter.com) In an area of Belfast known as the Cathedral Quarter (you should check out my coverage of its Arts Festival here ), there’s a little monthly newsletter called Quarter Beat. Leafing through some copies of the free publication I’d had slotted in my magazine rack, I came across October 2013’s print when Quarter Beat was at the ripe young age of Issue 9. The main article was written by a Cathie McKimm, entitled ‘A Tour Guide’s Perspective’ and detailing her many anecdotes about taking tourists around ‘The Big Smoke’, colloquially referring to everything as ‘wee’ (no matter what size it is) and how the Assembly Rooms, one of the oldest buildings in the city, is slowly being reclaimed by weeds. However, what had stuck in my mind from reading the piece a few years ago was McKimm’s tale about an Texan visitor commenting that ‘The Troubles’ is a “strange name for a war… it’s almost a familial term – like something you

Source: All photos my own Having topped the charts in eight countries within her album’s first week, Florence + the Machine is premiering her How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful Tour at the newly-renamed SSE Arena in Belfast. With her trademark soaring vocals and Stevie Nicks-like elegance, support band The Staves are a wonderfully satisfying contrast to tonight’s headliner, complimenting Florence’s danceability with their sleepy falsetto and honey sweet harmonies. To liken the sister trio to Haim would be a generic comparison. Blending indie folk with a melancholic yet poppy air which builds to a Fleetwood Mac-esque denouement, the sisters from “glorious Watford” have a sound not unlike Fleet Foxes. Playing against a glittery backdrop as purple light floods the stage, the girls – dressed all in black with perfectly straightened locks – gather around the microphone in sweet sisterhood to sing acapella. “ Even the good die young ,” croon the girls on ‘Let Me Down’, alternating lea

Disco Sucks: Steve Dahl, 1979 (Source: orlandocultureshock.wordpress.com) Why thousands of disco records were burned and why disco will never die On 12 th July 1979, an unprecedented 59,000 hard rock-loving baseball fans stormed Comiskey Park in Illinois for what would go down in history as Disco Demolition Night. Local radio DJ and Led Zep/Stones devotee Steve Dahl initially unleashed his ‘Disco Sucks!’ campaign during his slot on Chicago’s 97.9 WLUP-FM, based on the premise that “Midwesterners didn't want that intimidating [disco] style shoved down their throats”.       At a time when Studio 54 was in its heyday and stations were substituting REO Speedwagon and Black Sabbath for tracks by Sister Sledge, Donna Summer and the Bee Gees, Dahl decided to lash out at the soaring popularity of disco music in the wake of  Saturday Night Fever  in 1977. In an attempt to “eradicate of the dreaded musical disease known as DISCO” (which incidentally was filling discotheques acr

(Source: google.com) “Some things belong on paper, others in life. It’s a blessed fool who can’t tell the difference.” If I’m completely honest, I initially decided to watch this film because I fancy Joaquin Phoenix loads. Aside from his looking dreamy as ever, Quills is a genuinely great film with a fantastic cast which exceeded my expectations when I first put it on. In fact, before watching Quills , it’s worth knowing a bit about its protagonist, the infamous Marquis de Sade. Born in Paris in 1740, he was an aristocratic politician, philosopher and writer, known for what Wikipedia is calling his ‘libertine sexuality’, characterised by violence and a complete lack of morality; in reality this was most likely his perverted and often misogynistic sexual fantasies (the word ‘sadism’ is derived from his name, so take from that what you will). During the time of Napoleon, he was imprisoned several times, notably in the Bastille and finally in an insane asylum at Charenton nea

On synesthesia, Jean-Michel Basquiat and working with SOAK... exclusively in Jack's words. Who are you and what do you do? My name is Jack Coulter. I am an abstract expressionist artist from Belfast, born in 1994. Why do you do what you do? Where do you draw inspiration for your work? Growing up as a child, I was heavily exposed to abstract art. My aunt Christine was my greatest influence - she was an abstract printmaker. My mum had her prints exhibited in every room of my house - they are breathtaking compositions. I was in awe of her work - I could 'hear' her paintings. Later in life, I became aware that I was born with synesthesia. To have her embrace my artwork from an early age was vital; young minds are brittle - disbelief can arise from just one individual's opinion. Whilst living in Germany, she once had dinner with Georg Baselitz - he was lucky to have met her. She always believed in me, even when no one else did. She sadly passed away the day befor

The man himself (Source: Rolling Stone) When writing about Hayao Miyazaki and his films, you could really overuse the words ‘cute’ and ‘weird'.  Hayao Miyazaki may just be the cutest old man ever. And his films are just as cute! From the outright adorable (My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo) to the downright bizarre (Spirited Away, Porco Rosso), one of Japan’s most famous directors has smashed box office records whilst producing some of the sweetest and weirdest shit you’ll ever watch. With Studio Ghibli he’s created tens of films from the mid-eighties right up until last year, and of Miyazaki’s movies, here are seven of his best, in my humble opinion: Spirited Away (2001) Source: thedissolve.com Spirited Away happens to be my favourite film of all time. I’ve watched it countless times since I was little and my undying love of this wonderfully far-fetched tale still remains. Translated from the Japanese ‘Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi’, it's something like the Ja

This article originally featured on the now-defunct altmusicbox in 2015. Anthems like ‘We Are Family’ are usually synonymous with drunk uncles at family reunions and novelty songwriting as opposed to true musical hidden gems. It’s misconceptions such as this that have plagued Sister Sledge’s 1979 album in the eyes of the music-buying public and left the sisters’ 12” singles resigned to the graveyard of charity shop vinyl crates. And what an absolute shame! A perfectly crafted blend of disco, funk and R&B, commercially viable for pop radio yet with a nod to classic soul, Chic-produced We Are Family is an album that has gone on to be a central influence on the dance and even hip-hop scenes for decades after its release. Formed around the talent of four actual sisters – Debbie, Joni, Kathy and Kim Sledge – We Are Family was the group’s breakthrough record, spawning four hit singles thanks to the sprinkling of magical production courtesy of Chic masterminds and godfathers o

Source: fatgirlscanruntoo.ca Recently I asked my Mum if she wanted to have my copy of Elle as I’d finished reading it, and she took me up on the offer. Sometime later, getting into her car, I found it dog-eared and tossed onto the back seat. Being the complete neat freak that I am, I wondered how she could possibly have chucked it away like that, letting the edges of the pages tear and the covers bend. It cost a whole four pounds after all. The now slightly warped face of Kim Kardashian pouted up at me from the glossy cover. And this wasn’t a one-off encounter with a discarded magazine; battered, years-old stacks of issues of hairdressing periodicals and stereotypical women’s weeklies adorn the coffee tables of salons, waiting rooms and even houses worldwide. It has become a regular occurrence to be faced with magazines bearing a crisis-ridden Katie Price two husbands and four boob jobs ago whilst waiting to see the dentist. The magazine is a bit of a diminishing art form,

"Would you like me to seduce you?" Everyone knows the iconic still of Dustin Hoffman and a wedding dress-clad Katharine Ross looking relived and slightly bewildered sitting at the back of a bus. The actors’ expressions in this scene have gone on to become synonymous with Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic The Graduate . Recent East Coast graduate Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), something of an over-achiever at college, returns to his home in the shallowness of white southern Californian suburbia, unsure of where his life is heading and surrounded by “plastics”. Following a family dinner party, Ben is seduced by his parents’ friend Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), spawning the classic line “Would you like me to seduce you?”. This then develops into a full-blown tremulous affair between the married and much older Mrs. Robinson and the virginal Ben. It soon becomes clear that Mrs. Robinson is in a loveless marriage and is only using Ben for sex. Coerced by his parents,

Listening to certain records, it’s sometimes hard to believe that they’re as old as they are. There are the obvious game changers – Sgt. Pepper’s , The Wall , Electric Ladyland , Highway 61 Revisited , Kind of Blue , I Feel Love , Nevermind , Dusty in Memphis , to name a few – but there somewhat less obvious records that have helped to shape modern music. After a lot of narrowing down, I settled with these five as my personal picks. ·          Rapper’s Delight – The Sugar Hill Gang Released in 1979, this ground-breaking hip-hop track sounds like something straight out of the nineties. Nurtured from freestyle created at a hip-hop event in the Bronx in ‘78, it has gone on to be, arguably, the first song to bring rap into the mainstream. The track features a bass line from Chic’s ‘Good Times’ and has influenced huge hits from Blondie’s hip-hop-inspired ‘Rapture’ to essentially Grandmaster Flash’s entire career. Fourteen minutes and thirty-five seconds of pure old-school bliss.