Any bass-heads who’ve followed Getter over the last few years know there’s been a distinct evolution in his brand, music, and web presence over the last 12 months. His Instagram feed turned neon, he began to stray a bit from his typical bass-to-the-face sound, and I found myself enthralled watching Vine loops of him doing totally ordinary things – literally eating a hamburger or driving around. Then his “Headsplitter” video for OWSLA dropped and I began to wonder whether he’d discovered LSD, been abducted by aliens, or had some other reality-shattering experience.
“You know what it is?” 22 year old Tanner Getter asks reflectively, pausing the video game he’s playing to answer my questions. “When I first started with the intention of just doing music six years ago, I was myself and I dressed like myself and I didn’t give a fuck. Then I started making a certain kind of music that I perceived as having a certain kind of look and attitude, so I started wearing all black and being a dick to people. I slowly realized after years of failing that it wasn’t what anyone wanted. Then this year, the second I changed back to how I normally used to dress and acting how I used to act and put that into the brand, that’s what made it all work. I’ve had the ‘Headsplitter’ video idea in my head for years now.”
Tanner is soon laughing at himself imagining what an old Getter video might have been like for the same song. “Probably me in a graveyard dressed in all black digging up a dead body. I was making straight dubstep, all my releases sounded the same. And my fans were fucking with it, but I wasn’t getting any new ones.” But in 2015, he started releasing everything he made regardless of genre, on different labels, and the new working Getter-model proved up immediately. “I had like five different side projects I wanted to create, but then I had a meeting with my agency and new manager and they convinced me to put it all out under Getter. So that’s what I did.”
As a result of pigeon-holing himself into hardcore dubstep for so long, Tanner has an arsenal of tracks he’s been sitting on imagining they weren’t right for Getter. But the floodgates are open now and we should all be very excited – some the sounds on his new EP are almost Pink Floydian, woven into dreamscape pop, hyper-cinematic dubstep, and a whole spectrum of genre variations in between. “Shoutout Skrillex who’s been supporting me lately, he’s paved the way for me to do everything I’ve wanted to do. And shoutout Datsik and Shara who gave me my first record deal at Firepower and supported me when I wanted to go to OWSLA. And my mom, who bought me my first guitar, and my dad who bought me my first laptop. And my cat, Boogie, just for being here.”
Tanner cut his teeth playing music in metal bands growing up in San Jose but was constantly disappointed when, “No one ever showed up [to practice].” He explains further, “Then I discovered dubstep, realized I could make that shit by myself and keep all the money. I was a fan first, so I had a year where I just listened to everything I loved and tried to figure out how to make it. The craziest thing is now I’m meeting metal bands that were iconic to me growing up and they fuck with my shit.” After this next release, everyone is going to be “fucking with his shit” even more. This is such a refreshing collection of songs, it celebrates Getter’s evolution and the evolution of every kid who made the transition from loving metal to bass music. Many of those fans are realizing that other genres can be cool too and here’s Getter making it all rock hard AF while managing to constantly trip us out.
I get to looking at his tattoos, cause they’re pretty metal-tastic. He has a full sleeve on one arm that looks like part of a human-robot creature. He tells me the style is called biomech, which is basically what a cyborg might look like inside, and I ask if he believes humans will physically integrate with technology in our lifetime. “Hell yea! I hope so. Everyone’s telling each other to stay off their phones, we’re spending too much time looking at screens – live a little. I’m like, bitch, I’m living in my phone! And it’s tight. I feel like everything everyone’s ever wanted is here and now people are scared of it. I think it’s awesome that people live in their phone. I don’t have to make conversation on a plane cause I’m playing Hyper Swiper!”
His whole attitude and ideas about the nature of reality totally reflect that of an American kid who grew up on the Internet – he’s ready for the singularity, first contact with extra-terrestrials, all of it. “Our generation is on a wavelength where it’s not super religious, but we believe in the shit that could be true and probably is. Like aliens are more real to me than what most religions believe. And if I’m an alien and I’m exploring another planet, I’m going to be super nice to everyone. It takes so much more effort to be mean. Aliens are probably overly nice, scrotally totally.” He sounds exactly like Spicoli and goes straight from using the term ‘scrotally totally’ to humming “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King” from The Lion King soundtrack at full volume. I’m thrilled to find him just as weird and strangely compelling in real life as he is on the internet.
I end by asking him what he’s most looking forward to about the future, and his answer is every bit as outrageous as you’d expect. “I can’t wait til I can make music with my mind. Your laptop is the middleman – your brain barfs out the ideas onto this machine, then you make it and print it out basically. But someday, you’re going to be able to write an idea in your head and bluetooth it directly into your computer,” Tanner says in all seriousness. I suppose until we integrate with the machines he’ll have to keep working the old fashioned way.
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Watch the Liam Underwood-directed video for Getter’s “Rip N Dip” below, a sequel of sorts to “Headsplitter” and part of the Radical Dude! EP coming on OWSLA on March 11th. In his words, expect “Better ingredients, better music, better Getter.”
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Words by Molly Hankins
The post The Man Behind The SUH: Getter Talks Music, Tech, and Aliens, Dude! appeared first on Nest HQ.