All artists at every level go through a variety of struggles. Some challenges are easier than others, some harder for others. Artistmap by 6AM Presents: The Struggle Is Real, covers how Artistmap Game Changer members deal with everything that comes with an artist's journey from creative blocks to networking struggles and how they overcome or work on them. These artists come from all walks of life and want to let you know that you are not alone and that "the struggle is real". This installment features LA based artist, Amuck.
James, better known as Amuck, is a rising producer from Los Angeles. His style blends hard kicks, industrial hits, and is saturated with dark, ominous drones, and hypnotic grooves. In 2021, Amuck won the RE/FORM spring contest by unanimous decision, and in 2022, he secured victory in a remix contest with Chemtrailz for Physical Techno. Later that year, his remix caught the attention of Charlotte de Witte, who played it during DJ Mag's Top 100 celebration, marking her No. 1 spot for the second consecutive year.
Amuck is an artist who's indefinitely mindful of his craft, now on the path of self-releasing his own music, staggering multiple self releases and 10 tracks, with the most recent being a 3-track EP named UNKNOWN VISITORS and a single named MEGATRON. Amuck is on a frenzy doing what he knows best: RUNNIN AMUCK!
Artistmap by 6AM asks Amuck to share his story and how he deals with a variety of necessary challenges for the artist journey.
If you’re ready to master the discipline, focus, and strategies to level up in your artist journey, enroll in #ArtistMapby6AM, a roadmap program for house and techno artists supporting them in their quest to turn pro 🔊
How Do You Overcome Creative Blocks?
I overcome creative blocks by simply taking breaks. I find that trying to smash ideas is counter intuitive and taking breaks simply give room to relax the mind.
Sometimes a break of 15 min or 30 min to go grab a snack or work on other side projects like editing photos or sometimes even a few weeks; I say this because sometimes while im working on Music i can go for weeks to months working on the same track and when doing so, my mind will play tricks on me because of ear fatigue so taking a few weeks off and not just me making music but I won’t event listen to music in general. I like coming back with a fresh clean slate set of ears and this usually improves dramatically my creative process.
I'd recommend to overcome creative blocks is to not cut corners, I know when I first started learning to produce it felt daunting to realize that this is not going to be easy learning how to navigate the software, learning short cut keys, terminology, tricks, theory, FX, composition, arrangement, synthesis all these things as obvious as it sounds will help you create better and faster. I know some artist that don’t do the work, that don’t spend time to do their research to educate themselves on the fundamentals of music production.
A day or multiple times I overcame a creative block was something that happened over the course of years for me to figure out. I remember when I first started producing I would go 10+ hours producing 7 days a week, I would stay up till 5 am regularly, on my days off the most I went was 22 hours with hardly any breaks; the only breaks I had was to run to the bathroom because I would even eat while producing.
Now this sounds like it might be productive BUT IT'S NOT, I remember how frustrated id get sometimes. Sometimes I had a good groove going I was working on fro a few days and for some reason that groove sounded like shit a few days later so I kept on editing it and editing it until it was no longer the same track. Id export the tracks as I went and would upload then on private to Soundcloud for me to listen to on the way to work and would obsess about what im going to change as soon as I get back home, I'd listen to them on my air pods at the gym, mean I would be glued to them at all times.
Sometimes I'd get over the project and start a new one and did this for a few years until one day I went back and found some old music and decided to play it and to my surprise I really liked what it sounded like but it was now too late as I had already made a bunch of edits to the project file and wasn’t able to access the original file.
Another piece of advice is to do shadow work, or in other words work on yourself, and not just physically But also listen to your inner dialog because there might lay a frame of character that is dependent on limitation and doubt. Many times our beliefs are not ours but rather a combination of preset cultural, society and family beliefs.
How Are You Finding Your Voice as an Artist?
I'd say my sound is a combination of different styles of subgenera I love,
I'd definitely say my sound has that BIG ROOM DARK vibe included in several tracks, Im a big fan of COLDHARBOUR recording by Markus Schulz but it also has a static, distorted, saturated Industrial noise elements as well as FAT layered HARD TECHNO KICKS
The turning point for me was when I created DONT GO TO THE BASEMENT, this is an original track i was so impressed by it, and still am to this day. I remember durning that period I had a booking to play at a Renegade and I was nervous to play an original track for the first time durning a live set, so I was anticipating the best time fro me to mix it in on my set and lets just say I played it at the perfect time because it felt so natural and just right; everybody felt it, everybody was chanting and screaming and it solidified for me the thought of me actually considering myself an artist/producer.
How Do You Work Towards Self Promotion?
So I promote my music on Instagram, Tiktok, Soundcloud but Im still learning how to promote my music better
I don’t really have tips to give on promoting as im still learning haha
The way im working on this is, I recently ran an ad on Facebook to promote my music but that didn’t work at all, so the next thing tried was make a funny reel. The reel was a video of a POV camera angle walking towards what looks like a hut thats bouncing up and down from loud music and when the person makes it inside there’s a man dancing with a donkey standing on its rear legs. It’s a short clip but it’s hilarious. So what I did was remix the reel on instagram and swap the track for one of my own and it got over 100k views, 5k reach and over 700 likes, but I still don’t see any growth on that track on Spotify or Soundcloud =(
How Do You Network With Others?
The way I network is by simply talking to people and foster friendships first before asking for anything.
A rewarding collaboration I had was when I collated on a remix competition for Ayako Mori and ended up winning the competition but not only that, Charlotte Dewitte got a hold of that track and played it during DJ Mag top 100 livestream celebrating her No.1 spot for the second year in a row.
