Despite having a slight phobia of adhesives, Gary Stabler AKA Mr. Stabalina has no fear throwing sticky, electrified spunky funk at your eardrums. His own brand of sample-heavy breaks with a dash of ghetto funk flavor resonates in his most recent EP Do You Like It. Take it from the numbers, as the resonance speaks through a #1 spot on Beatport's Glitch Hop charts from track "Put Ya Hands Up" featuring Summer Bright.
When it comes to getting naughty on the beats and bass lines, Mr. Stabalina shows no shame in Do You Like It EP while keeping it lively, diverse, and non-stop uptempo. Witness a free-form of laughter-inducing sample collages, funkyass basslines, and saxual healing all in one album.
We had the chance to catch up with Mr. S for some words on the new album, his background and approach to production, as well as his next moves. Keep your eyes and ears out for this young, emerging producer belonging to the funky bunch of producers known as Scour Records.
Stream Do You Like It below while you read Stereofox's interview with Mr. Stabalina.Hey Gary! Great to have you for an interview. First, tell me a bit about Mr. Stabalina.
Thanks for having me, it’s an absolute pleasure! Alright so I’m a multi-instrumentalist musician that produces Funky Breaks music on Scour Records. Mr Stabalina is basically my playground for musical creativity. I aspire to make my music as fun as possible. Being from a city full of music, I see a lot of ‘samey’ musicians and producers and artists in general that take themselves way too seriously. Mr Stabalina is my attempt to go against the grain and do something different.
You just released your EP Do You Like It on Scour Records, which includes a nice mix of samples, rhythms, and lots of hype sound. Tell us more about this record!
I started writing this EP straight after releasing “Rock The Party” back in December 2015. I wanted to create something fun and exciting that never had a drab moment. The main album that influenced this EP was “Three Feet High and Rising” by De La Soul. It’s not so much the songs that stuck out to me, but the way that the sampling shaped the album is something I think is absolutely genius and wanted to mimic. Without listening to this album at that time the EP would have turned out completely different I’m sure. I guess the hypey-ness comes from my upbringing of Rock music, I have my dad to thank for that as he introduced me to one of my biggest loves in music, Led Zeppelin. He’s a big fan of The Beatles, Status Quo, British invasion music from the 60’s and 70’s and we used to play this kind of music in a function band together. Later on I’ve got into a whole load of music that I would have hated when I first got into music. The funny thing is that my dad has said on numerous occasions how he doesn’t like Funk music. That’s alright with me, dad, but you’re missing out!
You seem to have this ‘spunky funk’ theme in Do You Like It… where did that come from?
Haha! You know what, I’m not entirely sure where that came from. However, what I do know is that it works well with my mentality of what my music is all about - not about semen, mind you, but about being fun, different and not taking my self too seriously. I guess that it ties in well with Scour’s ‘tongue and cheek’ vibes… A funny moment was during the design stage of the EP artwork, which was made by Michael Boulton (check out his work when ever you get the chance!). James, A.K.A the big cheese of Scour Records and I were on the phone talking about the artwork - Bare in mind that we only tend to meet up in the flesh once or twice a year, we then were getting all flustered in the midst of suggesting how the artwork could be improved with things like “..the err… you know… c-c-condom… needs more ummm.. jizz… on it?” is definitely not your usual phone conversation with your boss!
You’ve been with UK record label Scour Records for some time. Tell us more about them and how you linked up with them.
Firstly, big shout out to Spinforth, A.K.A. James Evans. I’m very proud to be a certified #scourranger at Scour Records. What’s great and totally rare about James (besides his long winded essays) is that he is a real and genuine dude that puts an incredible amount of work into the label. Some of which things can go unnoticed by most people. What’s equally as great is his honest feedback on tracks. If your track is a load of bollocks, James and his fussy ears (as he likes to say) will be able to tell you in just the right way. It really pushes me to do a great job! Anyway, I’ll try not to suck his dick too much at this time and crack on with the question! I think I was just getting into making Funky Breaks music (before that I was making Electro-Swing) and came across Scour just at the end of the days when the Scour blogs were still happening. I think I recall sending a track over and getting a great response from J. 4/5 years later in 2018 and Scour has really helped to shape me as a producer and most likely as a person too. We shall wait to see what else is in store!
How did you get into producing? What are you using to produce?
So I guess if we go back to the days where I didn’t know what the word ‘producer’ really meant, it probably started when I was about 14. My dad had a tired looking Tascam 4-track cassette tape recorder and a cheap microphone that I used to record songs on. I’d kill to listen to those again just for the laughs! I’d plug in my guitar, bass and layer up sounds and see what I could come up with. I think I might have even done some singing! I spent a lot of days not making friends and instead just crafting my skills in music (something I’m still doing these days!). I’ve always been a bit of a technophobe and never been a fan of change. For this reason it took me a long time to actually get into music made on computers. Maybe I realized that if it wasn’t for technology, we’d all still be playing Renaissance Lute music from 1300 ad. Anyway, I’m using Logic Pro 9 on a Macbook air (I told you I’m not a fan of change!). I could list the other things, however, I’m a firm believer that it’s not about the fancy hardware or plugins, but instead, good ideas – Something that I try to remind myself of quite often!
What does your creative process look like when you’re making music?
Well it all starts with the most important meal of the day, which is coffee! I don’t feel like I get ‘inspiration’ as such but more of a motivation to create. Similar to how some artists need to have an emotional ‘trauma’ in their life to make music, I need to feel good when I sit down to make music. If I don’t feel good and try to create something opposite to what I’m feeling, you can hear a big difference in the music. I’ll normally write a song around one specific sample that I like the sound of. Quite often it’s the main hook of the track like a Saxophone lick or a vocal sample and will spend hours trying it with different samples, tempos and styles until I get the one that I’m most pleased with and I’ll work with that. I’m normally maxing out my CPU, there are cables everywhere, all my guitars are off of the rack and I’ve gone through most of my coffee. At this point I’m still on an 8 bar loop being grateful that you can’t get sunburnt from staring at a screen all day. The actual process can often take endless sessions to finish (before James’ fussy ears tell me that it sucks!
What influences the style and sound of your music?
A lot of the way that I sample is almost mimicking the sound of radio shows in between advert breaks. Because it’s not like T.V. where they can flash a load of bright colours on screen, they are just limited to working with a collage of different sounds, voices and sound effects that are aimed to grab you. I’m also limited myself where I don’t have any kind of singing skills but I’ll try to make acapella sentences to fill that gap. A good example of my trying to do that is in “Put Ya Hands Up”. I can often sponge in other people’s music and find myself directly mimicking their sound. Quite often I’ve been told off by Scour for trying to pull too many ideas from other artists. The most recent case was WBBL. If you ever heard to original version of “Funkyass Bassline” you’d know what I mean!
What influences you as a person?
I like people that are working towards something and chasing whatever their dream may be. I find that being around these kinds of people makes me more productive. As well as this, I’m not going to lie, I hate my day job haha! This reason alone is substantial enough to want to do bigger and better things I reckon!
What sorts of things are you doing when you’re not making music?
To be honest with you, music is pretty much at the epicenter of who I am as a person. I could say that I do regular sessions at the gym and that I’m a semi-pro kite surfer but that would be a lie. I’m also in a function band that does regular gigs on the weekend. After setting up our gear we spend most of the day pissing around before playing the cheesiest hits to a bunch of turnt wedding go-ers. It’s great fun and saves me from going out on the weekend to drink too much alcohol!
How are your plans for the summer looking? What’s coming up next for Mr. Stabalina?
This summer’s shaping out well! Not only has the EP finally been released but I’m thoroughly looking forward to play my debut DJ set this weekend at Leopallooza Festival in Bude, Cornwall! I started teching myself how to DJ back in January and have been working my arse off ever since get my first set together! I’ve heard Cool things about this festival! There’s a comedy stage, which I look forward to checking out and of course all of my favourite Scour friends will be there! I have another tune with Scour that is mastered up and will soon be put out. As well as this, I plan to get as much music finished as possible and think about what kind of project I want to do next. I’ve already got a fair handful of projects on the go, some of which are collabs I’ve had in progress since a year ago (And I am to blame for that!). Whatever I plan to do next, I can promise that it will be funky! Terms and conditions apply.
Stream Do You Like It on all platforms here!
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