Portfolio I: As Serious As Your Life by Ill Poetic

On Tuesday August 17, 2021, Timothy “Ill Poetic” Gmeiner will release his first installment of an ongoing production series, “Portfolio I: As Serious As Your Life” on Definition Music. Inspired by Val Wilmer’s seminal 1977 book on the black free-jazz movement, “As Serious As Your Life” is an intimate and vulnerable work that funnels the urgency, frustration and freedom of that era toward the chaos of emotions that come with losing a parent during a global pandemic. Unlike prior releases from Ill Po, what makes this record especially unique is in the choice to cover such heavy emotional content with almost no words.

“‘As Serious As Your Life’ is designed to act as a portfolio of my work for and with other artists; to show my breadth as a producer, composer, engineer and visual artist. Along the way it captured much more: a global pandemic and the slow passing of my mom - a painful event experienced by everyone enmeshed with a deeply personal event only truly felt by me.”

After over 15 years of boundary-pushing self-released albums, mash-ups, production work, graphic work, entrepreneurship and even curriculum development, Ill Poetic has developed a wide spectrum of creative processes to express a range of thoughtful and honest work. It’s in “As Serious As Your Life” where we see Ill Po use as versatile a palette as ever to articulate these deeper nuances in a record that reflects explorations of hip-hop, jazz, fusion, 70s electronic music and film scores. Every moment of this record defies genre in order to live solely for its purpose.

“Portfolio I: As Serious As Your Life” will be available on all streaming platforms on Tuesday August 17, 2021.

Stream the first single HERE: https://smarturl.com/illpoetic-ASAYL