Photo by Bast Pictures
Before they came together as the electronic duo Kiings, longtime friends Sean Foran and Chris Siegel were both producers for hire and, like a lot of beat makers, both had grown frustrated with how little control they had over their work. They’d spend days perfecting a track for a singer or rapper, only to see it mangled by a shoddy final mix or lost in a barely promoted project.
“At the end of the day we were always a little bit unhappy with the final result, and we always thought the work could’ve been better if we’d have had a little more input or been able to put our own final touches on it,” Siegel says. “That’s where Kiings came into play. We were tired of putting tons of work into an instrumental song and then passing it off to an artist who maybe wasn’t as serious about it as we were.”
And so with Kiings, Foran and Siegel claim the director’s chair. The producers seek out the singers and rappers they want to work with and they retain control over the final edit of each track, handling everything from the engineering to the mixing and mastering in house. That hands-on approach lends a sense of unity to their new debut full-length album WWYDF. Though it features a dozen guest voices, many pulled from disparate corners of Milwaukee’s indie-rock, singer-songwriter and hip-hop scenes, all 11 of these tracks are bound by the same soulful, down-tempo sensibility. Each is as lush as it is fastidious.
Kiings laid the groundwork for the album with their 2013 remix EP Warehouses Possessed by the City, which reworked tracks from prominent Milwaukee and Madison bands. In the years since, Foran and Siegel expanded their network, soliciting an array of collaborators they thought might complement their original tracks.
“We reached out to so many people, even big name artists, just for the hell of it, because we knew that we were doing something special,” Foran says. “I think I can speak for both of us when I say that we weren’t afraid of rejection. If we thought somebody would fit a track well, we’d send them the instrumental, and either they’d respond or they wouldn’t. This album surely wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t taken that risk a hundred times.”
WWYDF revels in unexpected juxtapositions. “Garden” splits its verses between Field Report troubadour Christopher Porterfield and rapper Milo, while “1984” sandwiches folk songwriter King Courteen between rappers Bliss & Alice and WebsterX. Singer Rae Cassidy, formerly of the academic indie-pop ensemble San Fermin, tackles a mammoth torch song on opener “Feel,” while Colin Plant, previously best known as a rapper in acts like The Hollowz and L&R, reinvents himself as a singer on a trio of tracks.
“Really, what we’re trying to do is to make music that in at least some way or another has never been done before, works of sonic art that are somehow different or on another level,” Foray says. “We’re really trying to do something bigger than ourselves here, and I think this album and all the local Milwaukee artists that made it possible just makes another case for proving that in this city alone we have a hell of a lot of very special talent.”
Kiings play a 9 p.m. release show on Thursday, March 5 at Hotel Foster that will include performances from Christopher Porterfield, WebsterX, Bliss & Alice, King Courteen, Siren and Colin Plant.
