Kristen Sinclair

This interview was conducted for Pop Culture Puke in 2016. All photos courtesy of Allie's Instagram @allieteilz The self-dubbed DJ First Lady of the Los Angeles party scene, Allie Teilz , knows a thing or two about the industry for someone so young. The now 21 year-old all-vinyl DJ and Arizona native cut her teeth working at a Phoenix record store before booking her own concerts at the Rhythm Room and Crescent Ballroom at the age of 15, to New York venues 285 Kent and Daddy’s a year later. Boasting an eclectic record collection encapsulating R&B, disco, classic hip-hop, funk, soul and house, she has spun alongside Thom Yorke, M83, Frank Ocean and Lorde and rocked official parties for events as prestigious as the Golden Globes and Coachella. With a client roster that reads like a list of the biggest names in global entertainment, Miss Teilz currently provides tunes every Tuesday night for Nightswim at LA’s Hollywood Roosevelt hotel. So how would Allie’s enviable lifest...

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, ...

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 fill...

(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...