Spin Off inspiration: Willo on connection, nostalgia and the artists that inspire her

by Check Check | Wednesday Jul 10, 2024 | Features

Willo, PR

Willo has become a fixture of the Australian festival scene in recent years, spinning discs at Splendour, Beyond The Valley and Field Day, and supporting Future Classic label mate Flume on his 2022 arena tour. The Sydney producer released her latest mixtape, watching a memory, in April and followed it up with sell-out club shows in Sydney and Melbourne.

Willo will be back in her element at this year’s Spin Off festival, happening at Adelaide Showground on Friday 19 July. The Spin Off lineup is split between two stages. The main stage boasts international headliners girl in red, Conan Gray and The Last Dinner Party, and local acts G Flip, Peach PRC and Miss Kaninna.

Willo will perform on the dance-focused Sound Archive stage, warming up the crowd ahead of Swedish club guru DJ Seinfeld, Kaytetye house producer RONA., and Y2K revivalist jamesjamesjames.

In the lead-up to the event, Willo tells us what inspires her music and live shows, from emotional undulations to O’Flynn, Jamie xx and the parks and picnic spots in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

<a href="https://willomp3.bandcamp.com/album/watching-a-memory-mixtape">watching a memory [mixtape] by Willo</a>

Willo's biggest inspirations

Feeding off current events

My inspiration is super reflective of what’s going on in my life, the concerts I’m attending, the music I’m listening to, the people I meet and the state of my personal relationships. I explored this concept in my recent mixtape, watching a memory, which spans across a few genres.

Approaching genre and style

When it comes to making music, my emotions and feelings really drive my style and genre choices. So, it could be a 120 BPM journey-like reverie one day and an uptempo 160 BPM track that sounds like I’ve got a best friend the next. You just never know.

Playing live

I was fortunate enough to host a headline show with Duskus at Liberty Hall and The Night Cat in May and this gave me full creative control, which was awesome.

It was around the time when my EP came out and we wanted to play into the “watching a memory” idea, so we placed old TVs around the stage that ran mine and Duskus’ visualisers.

Lighting is also pretty important. We like to keep it fun, rotating through lots of purples, blues and pinks.