Ishmael Antar’s first foray into performing music was in a choir in Virginia, a part of his Bahá’í faith.
He was a youngster at the time. But even before then, Antar, 37, remembers watching his uncles play instruments.
Into his teenage years, he distanced himself from music as he expanded his horizons.
But he returned, and now he’s ready for another live show.
“A buddy of mine just had a status on Facebook: ‘If you could go back in time and tell your younger musical self one piece of advice, what would it be?” he said. “I said, ‘Don’t quit band, the politics in this small town is outweighed by the love of music’.”
Today, Antar performs as Ish the Stomach, and he’s releasing his first feature-length album, “Instructions for ShapeShifting. ‘It includes seven songs, three of which feature other artists.
He’s having a free album release show at 10 p.m. Saturday at Slackers, 319 S. Main St.
Ish said that the new album reflects his real-life experiences.
“It’s about transitions … Each of the tracks start off being inspired by one place and, as I write them, they grow and change, and then the more I start performing it and the more other people interpret them, I realize that they’re out of my hands,” Ish said. “They grow on their own, which is fun. So, yeah, growth and change are the major themes.”
Ish has previously released “The Duality EP,” which had five songs and ran for roughly 19 minutes. And in 2015, he released “The Get Lost EP,” which featured five songs and was nearly 27 minutes.
“They were near the length I would have wanted to release and call a feature,” Ish said. “One of them kind of fell apart when a girl I was dating passed when I was in the midst of working on the album … But I kind of put the scraps of what was already complete together in a way that I could be satisfied with just so I wouldn’t lose the progress that I made.”
Both extended play releass and the upcoming album will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL and other streaming services. But there’s going to be something new with “Instructions for Shapeshifting” — it will be available on vinyl. There will be 300 vinyl records produced, Ish said.
While the physical copies won’t be available Saturday, he said that he plans on booking local and regional shows when he has a timeline concerning the vinyl production.
Before becoming a rapper, Ish was a slam poet and took poetry classes in Santa Fe, N.M. At one point, he said, the teacher of the class, Joe Ray Sandoval, took the stage with Saul Williams, a well-known poet.
“I credit him (Williams) often for being why I put pen to page, why I got on stage with it,” Ish said. “In a lot of ways you can say that was really my start, why I took it to the stage.”
His first hip-hop show was in Albuquerque. In Aberdeen, he has done spoken word poetry at the Red Rooster Coffee House. Antar came to Aberdeen because his family has ties going back three generations, he said.
His love for rap and hip-hop developed at an early age when he was living in Washington, D.C. His father would listen to soul and rhythm and blues music. But he’d turn the radio off when rap was played. Through those years, though, Ish realized that rap was his genre.
“I kind of realized somewhere in those years, well, my brothers are into metal, my parents like blues and old soul, and hip-hop is for me,” he said. “It’s just kind of had its place in my life since I was a kid, hip-hop and punk like side by side.”
There’s a story behind his Ish the Stomach monicker. While his father was in the Air Force he was known as Izzy the Gut. And on one occasion, Ish was hanging out with some buddies and one of his friends called him The Gut.
Gut became Stomach. And now Ish is a part of the local music scene.
“My brothers had been calling me Matt the Fat Brat since I was (young),” Ish said. “But, at some point, I just realized they make fun of you with it, you make fun of yourself with it, and they’re like, ‘Well, I do use this against them?’”
Ish the Stomach isn’t Antar’s only music persona. He also performs as his blues character, Fat Matt Jones, which was inspired by the teasing from his brothers. While it’s a little difficult to manage the two personas, Antar credits the stage acting he’s done throughout the years.
Saturday, Ish The Stomach will take the stage twice at Slackers. He will also perform as Fat Matt Jones. Evan Fogel will add a 45-minute set.
