The shadowy figure at the center of the WordSound multiverse who masquerades as Spectre, The Ill Saint, (among other aliases) is none other than Skiz Fernando, a singular figure in the media/arts community. After graduating from Harvard and the Columbia University School of Journalism, he began his career as a music journalist for The Source magazine. He parlayed his knowledge and expertise in the field of hip-hop into the critically-acclaimed book, The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture & Attitudes of Hip-Hop (Anchor/Doubleday, 1994), which has become an important document of the culture behind rap music. The New Beats has since been published in England, France, and Japan.
Not content to just write about the music he loved, Skiz, a long-time deejay and producer, borrowed $1000 from legendary bassist/producer Bill Laswell, and started WordSound Recordings in December 1994--a self-described “guerilla think tank†dedicated to continual creation and constant elevation. WordSound’s no-compromise, D.I.Y. approach and unique, artist-first agenda is responsible for 54 full-length releases over the last 13 years (10 produced by Skiz himself), including a handful of seminal singles on WordSound's vinyl-only, sub-division Black Hoodz. Running the gamut from dub and hip-hop to drum 'n bass and electronica to world and just plain weird, WordSound boasts an eclectic catalog, known worldwide for innovation, experimentation and creativity.WordSound has created a very close-knit, creative community worldwide collaborating with such artists as Bill Laswell, Prince Paul, Sensational, DJ Vadim, Kevin Martin, Mick Harris (Scorn), Style Scott (Dub Syndicate), Scott Harding (New Kingdom), Umar Bin Hassan (Last Poets), DJ Rob Swift (X-ecutioners), and the Jungle Brothers, to name a few.Skiz has run the label single-handedly from his home in Brooklyn and more recently Baltimore, all the while creating music and writing for such publications as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, and Vibe. His most recent endeavor has been making films. In 2001, he wrote, produced and directed the feature film Crooked. In 2004, as part of the label’s 10th anniversary, he created the dubumentary, The Greatest Thing You Never Heard. Both films are available on DVD.As Spectre, Skiz is responsible for conducting a campaign of “Bass Terror†on the mainstream music industry for well over a decade. It all started with the Crooklyn Dub Consortium: Certified Dope, Vol. 1 (WSCD003) in 1995, a critically-acclaimed compilation that heralded the birth of the iLLbient scene in New York. Spectre founded the Consortium to unleash sonic unrest on the populace and to bring certified dope from “The Other Side†into the country. After 4 volumes, the power and influence of this dub syndicate has spread to include numerous sleeper cells around the globe, who are ready to bomb your mindstate at a moment’s notice.Before the dust even settled. Spectre released The Illness (WSCD006) on mankind—part of the Trilogy of Terror that includes The Second Coming (WSCD024) and The End (WSCD035). In addition to being a veritable primer on Bass Terror, these releases also cemented his reputation as being one of the deadliest drum programmers around, garnering fans and imitators alike.After bombing Europe with Parts Unknown, and Retrospectre (both on Belgium’s Quatermass label), which increased the bounty on his head, The Ill Saint returned to WordSound to drop his magnum opus, Psychic Wars (WSCD045) in 2004.Spectre is also responsible for the Subterranean Hitz series (Volumes 1-3), which did for hip-hop what Crooklyn did for dub—unleashing revolutionary sounds into the atmosphere and spreading the ILLness throughout the planet. Of course the Rap Nazis at Fat Beats tried to proclaim these releases as “degenerate art,†but many copies remain, secretly circulating through the underground and studied like lost scrolls. The same goes with the compilation Weapons of Mass Destruction (Black Hoodz), a vinyl tour-de-force featuring killa instrumentals from Sensational, Mentol Nomad, DJ Klos, and the Ill Saint himself. You can still find copies at the wordsound site ( www.wordsound.com ).In 2006, Spectre dropped the long-awaited mix tape Tunes From The Crypt following it with his seventh full-length, Transcendent, in 2007. Both releases are only available as a dowload through WordSound Digital.Currently, the Ill Saint is back in the lab, working on his next masterpiece, Internal Dynasty, to be released sometime in 2008.