Anita is a 23-year-old Denver native with lime-green hair. You might recognize her as a rising dubstep producer who goes by the name Green Matter. We caught up with her over coffee to chat about her new EP and how she got to where she is today for our latest installment of Who Are Ya?!
She started dying her hair green in high school because it “looked cool under black lights when I was at shows and people started recognizing me for it.” When she was trying to come up with her artist name in 2018, her dad helped her brainstorm. He had seen an album called “Blue Matter” so he suggested, “What about Green Matter?” and it stuck!
Green Matter’s obsession with the old-school dubstep sound goes all the way back to the beginning, with the OGs like Skream, Benga, Flux Pavilion, and Excision. Her older brother took her to see a Skrillex B2B Knife Party set on Halloween of 2012 and that show prompted her desire to produce dubstep. In 2016, she downloaded Abelton and dove right into teaching herself how to produce. Her brother and friends showed her some tips and tricks, but most of what she knows she learned from YouTube tutorials or from trial and error when attempting to emulate her favorite parts of tracks from her artistic influences. Even though she is a dubstep producer, she is inspired by Porter Robinson, his side project Virtual Self, and older techno.
When she was developing her sound, she went with her instincts stating, “I like this sound, this sparks joy to me, so I leaned heavily into that and did what came natural to me.” Recently she has approached formulating new tracks by “playing on the keyboard, messing around until I find a catchy melody that really sticks and start building from there.” It could also mean starting out with a classic sounding bass line, it varies per track. Tracks take her anywhere from two to four months to feel complete enough to be mastered because “as a perfectionist, it never really feels done.”
If you have yet to listen to Green Matter’s work, she recommends you check out “Speakers Knockin’” because “that is my most well-known track at this point and where I really started to dial in my sound and style.” In dubstep, there are a few record labels that every artist dreams of working with, like Flux Pavillion and Doctor P’s Circus Records. Green Matter has released not only on Circus, but also on Excision’s Subsidia, Ganja White Night’s SubCarbon, and Mersiv’s MorFlo. She would love to work with Zeds Dead’s Deadbeats and Liquid Stranger’s Wakaan in the future.
In the two years since her last EP, Green Matter tapped into her emotions. Using music as her outlet, she composed her latest EP, Peace in Chaos, which was released last week. The theme of this EP is “finding my peace within this chaotic life that I live and having to ground myself when everything around me is falling apart or stressful.” The first track “Between The Stars” is about feeling alone and as you progress through the EP, the tracks give a sense that you are closer and closer to getting through it. They all have more melodic intros that morph into heavy drops. She worked with a few different collaborators including Charmae, Yvga, Feelmonger, and Spellwork. She loves all of their work and appreciates their input in bringing her vision to life. Her favorite track on the EP is “Mind Visions” with Feelmonger. She told us that if she could collaborate with anyone on a track in the future, it would be G Jones.
Some of Green Matter’s most memorable moments in her journey so far include the first time she played Mission Ballroom in Denver in 2021 and winning Excison’s Bass Music Initiative in 2022. “It gave me so much confidence and made me feel secure in what I was doing to get recognition from someone I’ve looked up to for a decade.” From there, she was also able to perform at both Bass Canyon and Lost Lands. Other notable shows she’s played include Subtronics Cyclops Cove in 2022 and Forbidden Kingdom in 2023. Her favorite performance so far was her sold-out headlining show in Louisville, Kentucky. She also attended a Jantsen show at Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return and was able to go B2B with him because she had her USB with her. If she could perform at any festival, her top three would be Electric Forest, EDC Las Vegas, and Tomorrowland.
While there have been quite a few ups in her career so far, there have also been some downs. As a woman in the male-dominated bass scene, she has faced plenty of adversity. She recounts some producers have been passive-aggressive towards her and given her the cold shoulder. “There was this certain energy that people would have towards me, like I’m in it for the wrong reasons and was only getting certain opportunities because I’m a woman.” She’s had to prove herself constantly and has noticed “a lot of white men are skyrocketing to the top and getting opportunities from people that have had eyes on my project for years but now these other people are a priority.”
Over the last few years, Green Matter has crossed some big goals off her list, but she has a few more that she wants to tackle in 2024. She wants to “continue to build up my catalog of unreleased tracks to play at shows; create a live set that incorporates more midi pads, keyboards, and drum pads; and transition to working as Green Matter as my full-time job.”
If you want to catch a live Green Matter performance, you’ll have a few more opportunities this year. She will be performing in California for the first time next weekend at Insomniac’s Apocalypse ZombieLand festival. Across the country in New York, she will be supporting Ravenscoon on one of the last stops of his Periphery tour on Dec. 8. Back in Colorado, she has a couple more shows scheduled including one in Colorado Springs as direct support for III Gates on Dec. 2 and another in Denver with Level Up on Dec. 15. Green Matter’s sister, who does all of her media, will also be joining her on all of these dates.
When Green Matter isn’t making bangers or selling out shows, she’s probably playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild or watching a scary movie. She’s not into the gory kind of scary movies, but rather the psychological thrillers. Looking forward to 2024, Green Matter has more original songs, collaborations, and remixes to release and shows to announce, so make sure to follow along using the links below.
