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.”

With a show where you’re just as likely to hear some Simple Minds or Pink Floyd as a smattering of Detroit techno, throbbing German electro or Italo-disco, DEBONAIR quickly got a reputation as a selector with the ability to draw the dots between seemingly disparate styles of music. “If I had twenty great techno records that week I probably wouldn’t play them all as it’s not how I connect with music,” she explains. “I can’t really imagine doing a one-genre show. It’s important to give people some variety.”

With the show picking up fans, DEBONAIR says that she started to get offered club gigs before she’d “really learnt to DJ”, and has spent the past few years building her own club sound, as broad and inimitable as the one that’s won her fans on air.

“I’m one of the few who came to DJing from radio presenting rather than the other way round,” she begins. “And being a club DJ didn’t even feel like a tangible dream to me when I began.” With some of the world’s most iconic clubs already ticked off, and some very exciting gigs coming up, that dream’s looking more than tangible right now.

DEBONAIR is on fortnightly Thursdays, 5–6pm on NTS

This feature is from the October 2017 issue of Mixmag

Sean Griffiths is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow him on Twitter