Get to know DEBONAIR, the genre-busting NTS Radio regular

We’re going to have to start with a slight disclaimer here: DEBONAIR’s been a good friend of the Mixmag crew for a little while now. But rather than this being a case of us giving our friends exposure, it’s probably the reason it’s taken us so long to get her in the mag. “I had so many mates who worked for music mags and websites,” she says, “and for a long time they just thought, ‘Oh, it’s just Debs who comes to parties with us’.”

But with gigs at Berghain, Erol Alkan’s XOYO residency and her long-running residency at Oslo in East London, it’s impossible to ignore DEBONAIR’s growing stature as a DJ.

The 31-year-old, originally from Leamington Spa in the West Midlands, first came to people’s attention via her weekly show on NTS. After learning the ropes on student radio and interning at the BBC she became a regular presenter and Programme Director for the Dalston-based station in 2011, and her show became an NTS highlight.

“I’d moved to London and was going to some incredible nights,” she says. “But there wasn’t a station that truly represented all those great sounds for me, one which you could listen to morning to night.”