Localsfest Preview: Awful Record's Father and Ethereal

Frequency Blog

Oct 20

Written By admin

by Sanai Meles

As you may or may not already know, coming to WMRE's Localsfest is Awful Records's own frontman, Father as well as fellow labelmate, Ethereal, who will serve as the opener! For those who may not be familiar with the Father or Ethereal, we've got the low down.

Father

Father, the founder of the independent Atlanta based label, Awful Records, burst onto the scene last year with the Lil B reminiscent cooking anthem, "Look at the Wrist" ft. iLoveMakonnen & Key!. Since then we have come to see a continuous stream of music from Father, Ethereal, and the whole Awful Records roster. Just scrolling through the label's Soundcloud page, it becomes apparent that the label seems to have no problem whatsoever in the content creation department, based on the amount of music available for streaming.Last year, Father dropped his album, Young Hot Ebony which has since been followed up with, Who's Gonna Get Fucked First, which was released this past March (available to be streamed in full on Father's Soundcloud page). The album was well received, as was his "Cry $$$ Tour" this past summer.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF9kOkRCnyo[/embed]Father is enigma of sorts, just check out his Twitter or Instagram pages. His music, almost all of which is produced by himself or KeithCharles SpaceBar, speaks to this idea even more, On Who's Gonna Get Fucked First, which he describes as 32 min of pure, unfiltered debauchery," listeners came to be familiar with Father spitting raunchy tales in a relaxed, self-assured flow over minimalist production. It's something like a 2015 take on Too Short's "I Ain't Trippin'."But that doesn't just sum up Father. As part of what many have called the "New Atlanta" rap scene, his unique sound is indebted to a variety of influences such as the mid-2000's Atlanta snap music scene, troll-master Lil B, 80's cultural aesthetics, and even art on "90's cartoons like Rocko's Modern Life." His sound is not so much out of the norm these days considering the ever evolving Atlanta rap scene (i.e. Young Thug, iLoveMakonnen, etc.).Father's talents don't stop there. The rapper is also a self-taught graphic designer, producer, and video director. He admits he had to learn as much by necessity as by general interest. In a Fader interview he explains,

"All the stuff that I do, I never went to school for...I liked to draw a lot, though, and that turned into graphic design, which turned into video editing, then learning how to produce, rapping and recording myself, learning to engineer."

As for the future of Awful Records, he states, "I want to keep the brand pure."[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7FQzXNy-5Q[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utGys4U2PbQ[/embed]

Ethereal

Fellow labelmate Ethereal, is one of many colorful characters on the Awful Records roster. As the wheelchair bound MC puts it in an interview with Pigeons & Planes, "There’s a big ass group of fucking misfits from the country. A white boy from suburbia, a nigga from Mississippi (Father), a dude in a wheelchair, a nerdy ass girl—I think that’s what everybody is so attracted to.”[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thJNBX8LlQg[/embed]But Ethereal is much more than "a dude in a wheelchair." The rapper's aesthetic strikes a contrast with that of Father's. Starting out initially as a producer, his artistic output has come to incorporate everything from warped bass-n-drum to classic Three 6 Mafia horrorcore to trap music, and much more. Such sonic diversity is to be expected from a rap artist, who to my surprise, cites Phish as "the greatest band on Earth."But then again with Father, Ethereal, and Awful Records, one should come to expect the unexpected. To do otherwise would be to miss the point.