Issue 513

Ainslie Wills Ainslie Wills is something of an underground superstar in Melbourne. I first saw her at the Melodica Festival last year; while I was manning the merch desk people were streaming, as though two-by-two, through the tiny door of the Wesley Anne, until the room was full. It was then that Ms Wills began, punching the air with bizarre alien harmonies, tight rhythms and the kind of power you rarely expect from folk music. Fortunately, the strange pulling power of the Format Festival means Adelaide now gets to experience Ms Wills and her trio. 'Something For Everyone', Wills' second EP, is a clean and deep representation of her work. Yet, counter-intuitively, Wills says she wants to steer away from such a polished approach. "I am proud of the EP," she reassures me, "but now that there has been a bit of time to reflect on the whole process, I feel that it was too safe. I demoed the songs at home and they went through lots of refinement, which meant I lost some of the original energy that made the songs come out in the first place. Next time the focus will be more on capturing the right energy and mood and not trying to achieve the best 'take' for every part of every song." That doesn't mean the weird complexity of her music is going to disappear anytime soon. "I love songs that present moods and colours through textures and layering and am not necessarily attracted to the lyrics first. I suppose as a musician, you build up a sonic vocabulary based on the music you listen to, and so your compositions are based on various combinations of all these sounds. I don't hear all of the parts as a whole, they build over the songwriting process." Ainslie Wills will be playing for free the Format Festival on Thu 24 Feb at 9pm with Cheer Advisory Council. By Ben Revi