Mull It Over 055: with 6Music's Deb Grant
DJ Deb Grant curates a playlist of her current "Irish obsessions" for the latest instalment of the "Mull It Over with..." series.
When DJs Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft brought their BBC 6Music New Music Fix Live show to Belfast this time last year, there wasn't a local music lover worth their salt that would have missed the broadcasts dotted around the city that week, or indeed the explosive finale that took place upstairs in the Ulster Sports Club, where post-punkers Enola Gay moved everyone and everything in the room and out in the street (maybe even helping tilt the leaning Albert Clock back into position) as Derry duo Dirty Faces gave the live BBC censorship team a good workout six months before rappers KNEECAP would really make them earn their keep at Glastonbury.
In just over three years, Grant and Ravenscroft have pulled 6Music forward with a trustworthy ear and honest broadcast of new music across all genres and corners of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Today the 6Music brand is competing less so with the likes of its neighbours Radio 1 or 2, and more with real muso stations such as the digital platform NTS, which broadcasts around the clock from London to New York, and Rinse FM, who can now count one Tom Ravenscroft as their latest in house DJ. Luckily for fans of New Music Fix and 6Music, Deb is still pushing buttons alongside new host, the more than capable Nathan Shepherd.
So, when one of the freshest voices on national radio was going to be just down the road, I made sure to do all I could to worm my way in, write about the show and basically beg her to curate a playlist for my silly little zine that I publish online, which I most likely wouldn’t even still be putting out a year down the line. Well, we’re still here, we’re still silly and the lovely Deb has been kind enough to submit a playlist for Mull It Over containing, as she puts it, seven of her current ‘Irish obsessions’.
Upon listening to her playlist, it’s clear Deb is a crate-digger and club DJ by trade. Honing her skills from the young age of 15 in clubs and warehouses in Dublin, she manages in the confines of just seven tracks to capture focus with the gaze sounds of pôt-pot, then take you down to the austere realness of Joshua Burnside before reaching a crescendo with the noise of Makeshift Art Bar and guiding us to the dance floor just as Shampain’s TWEAKER starts, well, tweaking you out.
Thanks so much Deb for sharing this playlist with us. The greenwave of Irish music we’re all on just keeps on giving.