IAmHill On the Importance of Vulnerability in Music Production

Fresh off the release of her genre-blurring sample pack Isolate with Black Octopus Sound, iamhill sits down with Splice to talk about the process behind her uniquely vulnerable, experimental sound. Known for her raw vocal expression, glitch-driven textures, and emotionally charged songwriting, iamhill opens up about the creative mindset that shaped Isolate and what she hopes producers will discover inside it. In this conversation, she reflects on artistic honesty, technical exploration, and where her evolving sonic world is headed next.

Our Interview with IAmHill

Your pack Isolate is described as “a bold, genre-bending collection … raw, expressive, and unapologetically human.” What personal or artistic experiences led you to this emotional, “unfiltered” vocal style?

When I first started producing music, I worked as a solo producer with all synthesizers and in-the-box instrument plugins and samples. In those early days, people would often describe my sound as “EDM” or Electronic pop, but that never felt right to me - it was obvious to me that I was I only working within that genre as a means to a deeper personal expression. When I started working more closely with Mike Schlosser on what became the iamhill project, his expertise was what enabled me to develop a more complex palate that has become a staple in my work. I’m always reaching for something that feels real, in a world that seems to be leaning in exactly the opposite direction. I love to create sonic “worlds” that live on the edge of humanity, while keeping an element that feels exposed. Usually that exposed element is my voice. We may process the vocal heavily at times, but we’re always aiming for a sound that’s going to leave a mark.

The pack features over 400 samples across vocals, drums, FX, synths, guitar, and piano. How did you balance building a strong vocal-centric identity while also delivering such a broad sonic palette?

When we create sample packs, we write full songs that we later deconstruct into the pack. So we focus on the bones of the song first, which allows us to choose a really complete vocal structure with backing vocals, textures, and adlibs. This is what leaves us with such a wide selection in the final product.

How important is it to you that producers hear vulnerability in your work and how do you hope they’ll reflect that in their own productions?

This might be my top priority when creating my own music. I spend a massive amount of time consuming music, and I gravitate heavily to anything with “soul”. Not the genre - the feeling. I find myself drawn to songs of all genres that have this common element of vulnerability, truth, or honesty. Usually I hear it in a voice, but it also is translated in the production choices and how much care or attention to detail went into a song. I hope that producers feel inspired by our work, and by Mike’s exceptional level of care on these tracks, to really invest time and energy into discovering what their most authentic sound is. I want to inspire people to give up the easy path, and dig deeper.

On the technical side: what tools, workflow or creative process did you use when designing the one-shots and loops (especially the “glitchy FX, robotic vocoders, airy atmospheres”)? Any standout moment or moment of surprise during production?

Mike here! For this pack we were looking for things that feel inherently human or natural as starting places to bake a little imperfection or extra uniqueness into the sounds as we processed and mangled them. Hill’s voice is an obvious place to look for that, but we also leaned heavily on board game pieces, cutlery, water bottles, and other random household objects. We also explored different ways of using traditional instruments. For example there are some samples we made by having hill scream into a grand piano and recording string resonances. Once we have something like that I like to find interesting pieces of it and then chop and stutter them, add layers of reverbs and distortions, and then resample them until we’ve created something really unique and inspiring that can serves a bed for hill to sing over. Melodies and lyrics are obviously endlessly inspiring playing with the texture, emotion, or processing of a word or phrase can be really inspiring. For synths I do a lot of sound design in serum and on this project I dove into generating custom wavetables from captured audio more than I did on the last pack but we also captured some sounds I made in my Elektron gear or other outboard synths. For vocal processing I prefer editing by hand to create glitches rather than using a lot of glitch plugins, because I can be more intentional and nuanced… but I love Manipulator (by Polyverse) for vocoder effects and I have been loving Raum (by NI) for airy reverbs & adding texture to vocals. Sometimes if I’m looking for things to get extra weird I’ll program some multi effect glitches in Infiltrator (by Devious Machines). One of the coolest production techniques that hill and I have developed is having her sing layers of random vocals and then pulling them together into ambient stacks that sound like pads, but have layers of movement. It’s pretty easy to be inspired by finding structure in chaos and usually that chaos turns into my favourite moments.

Finally, what’s next for you after Isolate? Are there new artistic directions, collaborations or formats you’re exploring that you can share with us?

We’re working on some commercial side projects for fun, and have had plans for ages to make a stripped down acoustic album. We both love to craft lyrics as much as we do sonic landscapes, and writing with nothing but a guitar and a voice is a really beautiful way to lean into that.

Use the button below to download Isolate by IAmHill and be sure to check out Black Octopus for more amazing sample packs.