INTERVIEW: Elijah Amoss expresses his deep connection with music and the excitement for the future

We spoke with Elijah Amoss about his music career so far, and he opened up about the feelings of oneness he shares with music. He spoke on his love for visuals, blurring the boundaries between genres and being inspired by Kehlani.

Elijah Amoss is a bubbly and down-to-earth artist hailing from Newcastle who says he has always had visions of being a musician. “Since I was a little kid, it’s always been “I want to be on stage, I want to be performing”. It’s all I think about. I have another job and I love my job, but all I think about is music.”

Amoss says music has always been a prominent part of his life and he attended the Hunter School of The Performing Arts where music was all around him. “I’ve been doing music since I was about 15, professionally,” he says.

“I started off with acoustic music and doing acoustic shows and stuff like that. When I was about 18, I moved more to R&B and pop music, and I’ve just been trying to get into that style a bit more now.”

Amoss says his goal is to eventually move to Sydney to place himself in a more enriched music lifestyle.

“I do demos in my room at the moment and then go to Sydney to record and get properly mixed. I’ve just been working in the past year or two now, just trying to find my sound in that kind of R&B genre,” he says.

“I’m in Newcastle at the moment, trying to get to Sydney because that’s where it’s all happening. I’ve just been working on my music and trying to make my name known and doing a few shows and what not.”

The Newcastle-based singer-songwriter began writing his own songs on the guitar and through this, discovered his passion and his potential to actually create his own music. “I changed my style and I really love rap music, I love R&B, pop, I love all of that. I was like, why don’t I try and do that? That’s when I took it even more seriously and I was like, “Okay, how can I make this work, how can I do it myself?” It was just kind of trial and error, on the computer trying to record my own stuff and just had to let myself kind of sound shit until I sounded good and then it has just been the past year or two of just trial and error of different sounds…It’s been a bit of a process with that.”

Amoss describes his deep love for music unlike anyone else, saying his journey with music so far has been “…so healing, it’s been so incredible, and I just love music. Me and music are just one thing, definitely.”

When it comes to genre, Amoss enjoys the freedom of making music in any genre he pleases, without being tied to a singular sound. “I’ll create something and its totally different to the last thing I created. I really struggle to stay in one genre, or one box and I think I don’t really want to keep myself in one genre or box, I really want to just be free with it,” he explains.

“That also allows me to be able to collab with different people and create so freely and go into different aspects of myself. I don’t really want to tie myself down to one genre, but I think a lot of people, when I do perform, say pop and R&B. But it’s so exciting to sit down and create whatever, in that moment.”

Elijah Amoss is dropping a single called ‘SKIN’ sometime in the next couple months, which is expected to be released alongside a music video. “I have the song fully recorded ready to go, I’m just wanting to shoot the music video. I always feel like visuals really push the song a lot more. People love visuals, I love visuals, I love shooting music videos, so I want to get a video behind it…But yeah, ‘SKIN’ is coming.”

Amoss has an additional song on the way, which he claims will be the perfect example of where he stretches beyond the usual sound he creates. “I have a song coming out that’s very, very different to any other style that I’ve done, I think it’s a bit more emo pop,” he says.

“It’s called ‘Run Free’ and everyone I’ve shown, like my friends, they’re like “Bro, you need to drop this song”, so I’m going to Sydney in May to record it and I’m so excited. Every time I sing the song or listen to it, I get chills so I’m really keen to drop this one and it’s going to be a very special song for me to release.”

Following the release of these two tracks will be a full-length project. “I have a lot of songs I’m just sitting on, but I’m such a perfectionist, I’ve got to get it perfect, but I’m trying to ease up on that a bit. I just need to get it out, get out my music and I just want everyone to listen to it.”

We asked Elijah Amoss to name the artists who influence and inspire him and his music. “Kehlani, I love Kehlani, her music is just incredible. I love Justin Beiber too, a lot. And then tying on third, is J. Cole and 6lack. I just love especially Kehlani, J. Cole and 6lack, they’re very deep with their lyrics. A lot of the songs I’m working on at the moment, I like to get deep and have meaning behind it, because music is very much like my journal, my diary and I just express everything through music.”

The music video for Elijah Amoss’s single ‘face it’ is dropping today (May 11).

Photos by @linear.wave.sampler

Words by @livdaangel