The son of late BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, Tom Ravenscroft is a BBC Radio 6 DJ, a weekly music columnist for The Times, a presenter on Channel 4’s Slash Music show on 4Radio and now a festival curator. He has selected a week-long series of events to be held in the MAC. We sat down with the man himself to talk about it…
How do you find yourself in Belfast curating your own festival?
To an extent it kind of came out of nowhere, I mean I know Stuart who works here, I’ve done things with him before in the past in London and was over here doing stuff with BBC Introducing and it came off the back of that. It was a big surprise to me that they would actually let me do this. So it just came out of nowhere.
This building is relatively new, have you been here before?
I came back in March when I was over doing some things with the BBC and I came in and was shown around. It is an incredible building, it’s absolutely amazing. Obviously it looks great from the outside and then you come in and you think ‘what on earth’, and there is just room after room. It’s like the Barbican in London, where you are just thinking is there any way I could just live here.
You could do yourself as an installation in the Sunken Gallery, just put up a big bit of plexi glass and let people stare at you.
I think every time you come here you discover something different.
It’s a good venue for this to be held in, what’s the overall gist of what you’ve got going on here?
It’s kind of like my representation of the radio show on BBC, it’s just different styles of music, spread out over the course of the week. I also wanted to make sure it fitted in with the MAC itself.
How did you feel when you were first asked to curate this festival?
It’s slightly daunting but I’ll be happy when we are sold out of everything. Putting together the list of people I wanted wasn’t daunting at all. In fact I came up with it pretty quickly.
Did you get everyone you asked for?
I thought I would send a list and they would immediately ask for another ten because they had said no. But I was pretty amazed that I managed to get everyone I asked for. Over the course a few had to drop out for various reasons but the people that are playing were always on the list. So I never had to come up with a new list.
Have you ever done anything like this before?
Not really, I’ve put nights on in London. Mainly gigs, DJ’s, Christmas parties, but they only last about 5 hours never a whole week.
There is a few acts that you have said that you haven’t seen live before, is this just an excuse for you to finally see these people live?
Yes! I’m not even going to hide it there for a second. I think that you can only base this on something you yourself are desperate to see.
My personal pick is Adam Buxton; do you think it’s important to mix it up with non-musical acts as well?
I think so; I was really keen to get some comedy in there. Again I’ve missed him doing Bug so many times so I thought if I can’t go to him, I’ll just bring Adam to me.
Are you here for the full week?
I am. I might have to nip back to London on Friday to do my radio show, but apart from that I’ll be here the whole week.
The majority of the things you have put on here seem to be events, double bills, triple bills. Is that intentional so that perhaps people will catch an act they wouldn’t normally go and see while going to see one that they want?
Yeah I think so. Also the bands I’ve put together aren’t like each other in many ways. So someone who might naturally be going to see Ghost Poet wouldn’t normally go and see Girls Names, but they will catch them both on the same night. It’s kind of slightly forcing things upon you. You may leave having heard something that you wouldn’t expect to hear, I’m trying to bend your ear a little bit.
What was it like growing up with access to one of the world’s largest record collections, how did this shape your musical tastes and ultimately what you picked for this festival?
The truth of the record collection is that it’s so vast it’s basically impenetrable. It’s a lot easier to find a band you’ve never heard of than to find something you know. If you wanted to find something you already know, the length of time it would take you to find it, you could have discovered ten new bands. So I’d just go and do that instead. It couldn’t possibly be any more diverse than it is; if anything it’s made my ears open to different sounds.
So there is not a genre that you would exclude?
No I’ll always find something in there that I would like. Opera is the only one I struggle with and the whole of Brit Pop.
Have you ever been to see Opera with English Subtitles?
No, but that would probably be much better. Because you would realize there is actually a narrative.
Your dad famously brought NI music to the world during the troubles, do you think it’s come full circle with this being your chance to bring music from around the world to NI?
No I wouldn’t dare dream of comparing myself to my dad. Obviously my dad’s relationship with Belfast, there was a pretty tight bond there. I couldn’t possibly compete with anything like that. I think that if I could get a few more people round the world to hear some of these bands then I think that would be great. So I guess in some ways bringing bands to Belfast that haven’t played here before and giving Belfast a chance to hear them and at the same time that relationship goes the other way.
I really like the way that you have a mix of International Acts playing alongside bands from N.I…
Yeah, exactly. For example the press that Ghost Poet might get, and the Ghost Poet community that follow them everywhere, might then suddenly be introduced to Girls Names. That would be cool.
IN the court of…Tom Ravenscroft runs from 24th-28th Sept.
