The digit.iLL Network

Welcome to iLL-Literacy’s first ever digit.iLL.Network campaign! This is our attempt to take action to the theory behind our music – to recall the reason our human instinct drew us to invent music in the first place – for the sake of fellowship.  Together, we are comprised of artists, writers, tastemakers, and tastelovers, but what binds us all is that we are advocates of art with substance.

On November 17, 2009 we released the first chapter of iLL-Lit’s album, iB4the1.1. It’s free of charge because we believe that music is a natural resource, and because our songs are inspired by the world that we all share and contribute to, it’s not ours to require money for.  Following suit, we have committed to always provide a free option for people to obtain our music, forever.  As our projects continue to roll out, you’ll see how our philosophy of an “open-source” music experience welcomes everyone to imagine, modify, and take ownership in the development of music and artistic processes.  This is digit.iLL.Funk.  The collective conscious digitized.  Are you open to our modem?

Here is what happens:

1. We connect you. Listed on the front page of iLL-Literacy.com is a collection of over 50 links to websites that have joined the digit.iLL Network.  For the past few years our site has followed the development of ourselves as artists, traced our influences, and summoned attention to those who represent a similar flavor of living.  By placing your link on our site, we invite you to our community of readers and influencers, and to join us in freeing the music.

2. You connect us. We kindly request that you post a link to http://www.ill-literacy.com. There your readers will find a link to download our new record, as well as a co-featured wall of links to our network.  A gallery of dope websites, with iB4the1.1 as the soundtrack.

3. We supply you. As a token of appreciation, we’ll list you as an official presenter and at your request can design a custom banner for you to use as unique material for your post.  Here are a couple of examples:

Also, below you’ll find a treasury of music, video, and literature to help you build your story.  We’re down to interview, create exclusive material, and facilitate connections between other artists and bloggers within the network.  And then we’ll help you publicize it on your site.

4. You supply us. As your future projects, big stories, and campaigns roll out, keep us in the loop and we’ll blast it on our blogs, twitter accounts, etc..

5. Everyone will connect. In the next couple of days, I’ll develop an embeddable flash blogroll with links to all the sites in the digit.iLL Network for anyone to us if they’d like.  It’ll be a compact way to promote and be promoted with others who are involved.  In this way, everyone helps promote each other and we all expand the readership on our sites!

All of this is not only our way of thanking you for being an official presenter of our first record, but also to foster a community comprised of dope people!  When this all begins, we also encourage you to check out other blogs in the network, build connections, feature each other, and grow with each other.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started: We know that everyone’s time varies, so any extent of a post would be greatly appreciated.  However, we’d LOVE to hear your voice in your post.  It’s our way of learning from this musical process, and also unique material and writing allows us to quote and promote you in our future promo materials.

A link to iB4the1.1 and its cover art:

[Click to enlarge]

Click here to download iB4the1.1

Track Listing, cover art, and synopses for tracks:
Click cover art to enlarge

1. HihowRu (download)
Additional contributions by Smashley Johns (vocals)

2. Gentleman’s Kool-Aid (download)

Insofar as the irony of “retro-futurist 80s rebel pop” was too overwhelming to recreate in sound or iconography, the band known as iLL-Literacy has either speciously or insightfully (maybe both) opted for sample-inspired, bass-driven electric gospel funk in the form of their new single, “Gentleman’s Kool-Aid.”  The soymilkbuttasmooth lead track is both a reflection on the warped and often glennbeckianized historical narratives of what it means to be a “gentleman”, and perhaps a confession of the fragile ecology of male ego.  Let’s call it pollution of the Egology, otherwise known as “drinking thine own Kool-Aid.”

The composition in conversation features the soulful repository of Hi-Life drummer Rufus Redbone’s southern drawling voice, Billy Hi-Life’s bangtastic bass, and guestspots from former iLL-Literette Ruby, Hella U’s Glenda Mac, Gnaster iLL, and Big Dahdee. The track is a refreshing patchwork of vocal talent and digit.iLL orchestration organized by precocious new comers Dahlak and Ada Clock. Written and performed by Drizzletron, N.i.C., and Dahlak.

3. The HereNow

According to the relativity of simultaneity, it is impossible to say in an absolute sense whether two things can happen at the same time if they are separated by space.  However, the band of funky fermions known as iLL-Literacy insists that everything and everyone share a single moment – that we are all logged into a grand social network known as the HereNow.  It is the central hub where our avatar souls bend time in hopes to save the day, and where our common date with Destiny is to avoid becoming dated.  As coy fishes in the flow of time are poisoned with mercury, and Pluto is denied planetarianship, it seems that our moments (like all other natural resources) are plundered not with consideration for the Now, but fear of the Future.  By way of syllogism, the question then becomes:  when frozen in time, can thou keepest it cool? Indeed, where the electron is negative, iLL-Literacy’s spin is positive. And positively charged thou shalt be.  Fusing their talents with the vocals of the photonic phenom known as Jeremy “Passion” Manongdo, the iLLs beckon thine to come hither and join “The HereNow”–a P/G-Funktified ode to being present.  Lean in for the moment.

The composition in question spotlights the volcanic vocals of Jeremy “Passion” Manongdo, Big Dahdee, and the Khanadian Khoir.  High strings and low strings respectively by Sammy Hi-Life and Billy Hi-Life, and digit.iLL orchestration by Dahlak and Ada Clock. Written and performed by Drizzletron, N.i.C., and Dahlak.

4. Finding Emo (download)

At one point, the unpredictable and dangerous waters of “taking yourself too seriously” pushed the band of clownfish known as iLL-Literacy to self-seclude in the shallows of electric gospel funk.  Paranoid after a nearby planktonic community was swallowed for being too “deep,” iLL-Literacy never let their emotion, popularly known as Emo, beyond the jagged coral of the Great Barrier Reef.  That is, until the day “retro-futurist 80s rebel pop” took Emo to a place where most feelings can’t breathe–the Club.  With help from this generation’s short-term memory, watch these clever crustaceans snap back at industry sharks in Finding Emo–an epic journey to rescue emotional content from the artificial habitat of so many starfish.

The composition in question toils with the maniacal mutterings of Ruby Veridiano-Ching’s inner demons captured with a cerebral stethoscope, and battles the padded walls of digit.iLL orchestration by Dahlak and Ada Clock. Written and performed by Drizzletron, N.i.C., and Dahlak.

5. Circus Nights (download)

Across time and space, in both proverbial and adjectival noun designations, the FastLife has been rumored to be the shit.  The FastLife is not just the speed and velocity at which narcissists make poor decisions, but the unyielding taste for all things fiscally, environmentally and grammatically unstable.  It’s like Airborne for the common cold, if Airborne remained an unnecessary vitamin C supplement that didn’t really help the common cold but everyone took anyways, and the common cold was the desolate plane of whichever imagination imagined the cubicle.  The FastLife has less to do with self-indulgence, and so much more to do with a concept of the flaneur, the “botanist of the sidewalk” in a digitiLL world.  Or rather, if today’s said digitiLL world is a nastyfreak show and YouTube is a hall of mirrors, then the band of carnies known as iLL-Literacy feels most at home in the HereNow–they just want some funnel cake.   Along with ringmaster Rufus Redbone taming the chorus, watch as the members of iLL-Literacy spike their Kool-Aid with a ferris wheel’s worth of Airborne in Circus Nights – a proclamation of desire for the sexy cyclops known as fAME.

The composition in question is a cirque du souleil involving the lion-mauling vocal whiplashes of Rufus Redbone with background verbal trapezings by iLL O’Reilly, Big Dahdee, and the Khanadian Khoir.  Also featuring the ferocious facemeltings of guitarist Sammy Hi-Life, the tightrope bass licks of Billy Hi-Life, and a hall of mirrors reflecting the digit.iLL orchestration of Dahlak and Ada Clock. Written and performed by Drizzletron, N.i.C., and Dahlak.

All songs produced by Dahlak, co-produced by Ada Clock

About iB4the1.1: iB4the1 is an epic. The debut album from iLL-Literacy premiers in three parts– each approximately 25 minutes in length, and suited best for a short car drive…or upon the back of a spiny-toothed wombat in Africa, while watching Planet Earth on mute. The first of the three acts is simply entitled iB4the1.1. Despite its brevity,.1 is grand in its effort to bridge sampled voice and original instrumentation, experimental music and hip-hop narrative.

The sound of iLL-Literacy—architected by group member Dahlak with the assistance of producer Ada Clock, along with the contributing imaginations of N.I.C and Drizzletron—draws character from an unusual blend of influences, spanning funk, afro beat, alternative, soul and of course hip-hop.  iB4the1 is a presentation of iLL-Literacy in total humility and acknowledgement to all those who have come before and to the artists they are to become. This is iLL-Lit before the start. The prequel to the saga. iLL-Lit before the One. Take that how you want.

About iLL-Literacy: Toggling between daydream and full-blown hallucination, iLL-Literacy is a music and performance collective that fuses elements of funk, hip-hop, spoken word, and interactive theatre for a sound and live experience that draws as much from the rich artistic and political history of its Oakland hometown as it does from the experimental and imaginative inclinations of its current Brooklyn base.  In their recorded debut, iB4the1, members Dahlak, N.i.C, and Drizzletron work everything from the ground up – from in-house production, to self-directed music videos, to the development of a new approach to musical interaction that intimately involves the listener throughout the inception, production, and promotion of the final product.  Please join iLL-Literacy at www.ill-literacy.com.

More resources:
iLL-Literacy site: http://ill-literacy.com
Press photos: http://ill-literacy.com/photos
Press kit: http://ill-literacy.com/illpresskit.pdf
Twitter: http://ill-literacy.com/twitter
Myspace: http://myspace.com/illliteracy
Facebook: http://facebook.com/illliteracy

Music player with full record: (embed code on right side)

EPK (w/ appearances by Mos Def, Kid Cudi, Blu, B.o.B. Bobby Ray, Mickey Factz, 88-Keys, Zion I & Passion)

“Gentleman’s Kool-Aid” Pre-Video:

Thank you so much for being an official presenter!  We look forward to building with you.

digit.iLLy,
Adriel Drizzletronius Luis
adrool@gmail.com