Michael Cloud Duguay releases new album ‘Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go’ via Watch That Ends the Night Records
Michael Cloud Duguay by Jamie Kronick
Support for Michael Cloud Duguay and Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go
“ … a collection of quietly elegiac pieces that doubles as a sort of audio documentary about Newfoundland’s organs and the congregations to which they belong.” - The Guardian
"Duguay's album captures a sonic ecology." - The Wire
"A breathtaking musical document" - In Sheep's Clothing Hi Fi
Producer and composer Michael Cloud Duguay has today released his new album Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go via his own imprint Watch That Ends the Night, receiving plaudits from The Guardian, The FADER, The Quietus, The Wire, Bandcamp, CRACK, Music Tech and beyond.
Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go chronicles seven different church organs found in seven different historic churches scattered across an equal number of remote regions throughout Newfoundland, Canada's easternmost province. With over a year's worth of research and planning behind them, the album was recorded in just nine days, travelling over 1,500 kilometres with a mobile, solar-powered recording studio, The Scamper, built into a converted 1970s RV.
Church organs are distinctive instruments not only for their sound but for their construction, since no other major class of instrument is so inextricable from the building that houses it. That elision between mechanism and space plays a crucial role throughout the record. The organ features prominently, but rather than acting as a standard record of organ music, the album functions more as an abstract musical documentary about organs, the buildings they live in, and the communities around them.
Listen to / buy Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go here
In July 2024, Duguay and his longtime collaborator Jake Nicoll, who engineered the sessions and also appears on flute and voice, set out on the journey alongside Andrew MacKelvie (compositions, organ, saxophones, flute, piano, rocks) and Dave Grenon (field recordings, co-engineer and co-producer), with photographer Noah Bender documenting the trip. Tracing the eastern perimeter of the island northward, with stops on the coastal islands of Greenspond and Fogo, the group made their way up to the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula before ending on Newfoundland's west coast.
Each of the seven churches presented its own organ history. Some instruments had recently been updated with digital keyboards and amplification, while others hadn't been serviced in 120 years. In one case, the team had to dig an organ out from beneath a pile of rubble in the upper gallery of a decommissioned church. None of the album's compositions were written at an organ, and Duguay had little prior experience with the instrument before the sessions began, a limitation that lent the record a palpable sense of discovery rather than posing an obstacle. The experience later led him to study organ formally through a scholarship from the Royal Canadian College of Organists, who also supported the recording.
The album's cast of guest musicians reflects the communities the group encountered along the way. Cormac Culkeen of Scions appears on ‘Winterhouse,’ Newfoundland fiddler Maria Peddle features on ‘Little Seldom’, collaborator, Andrew Mackelvie, contributed two of his own compositions, ‘Tilting’ and ‘Change Islands’. ‘Settlement’ is an arrangement of a song by Huron-Wendat multi-hyphenate Georges E. Sioui, woven together with an archival recording of his voice, while the album's closing piece features 90-year-old retired church organist Mary Tucker, who Duguay had interviewed earlier in the process. Those interviews, conducted informally with wardens, ministers, and congregants at each church, are threaded directly into the record's sonic fabric, engaging from a secular perspective with the history of the buildings and the decline of organ culture as congregations dwindle and churches close.
Duguay and his collaborators also recorded each organ individually in order to document and archive them as virtual instruments. Alongside allowing the material to be faithfully recreated live, these digital replicas will be released to the public as free sample packs following the album's release.
Equal parts unconventional and alluring, Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go unfolds a quietly captivating meditation on community, memory, geography, history, and spirituality, drawing on sacred music, free improvisation, sound art, ambient music, and acousmatic technique. Not unlike the church organs at its centre, the album's architecture uses the resonant spaces traced by its detailed sound design to reinforce the beauty of its compositions, remaining grounded throughout by the relationships it documents.
Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go is out now
Listen / Buy here
Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go tracklisting
Pond 1
River of Ponds
Greenspond Tickle
Winterhouse (feat. Scions)
Little Seldom
Pond 2
Tilting (feat. Andrew MacKelvie's Many Worlds)
Change Islands (feat. Andrew MacKelvie's Many Worlds)
Damnable Island
Settlement (feat. Georges E. Sioui)
Pond 3
More about Michael Cloud Duguay
Musician, composer, and producer Michael Cloud Duguay first gained recognition as a vital force within the early 2000s Canadian DIY music community, contributing to dozens of critically acclaimed recording and performance projects as a producer, arranger, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist.
Following his beloved solo debut Heavy On The Glory (2012), Duguay spent almost a decade grappling with mental illness, substance addiction, and homelessness, but his commitment to music prevailed, ushering in a new era of creativity. His newfound momentum brought on a thirst for exploration that has since led him to expand his practice well beyond his foundation, as evidenced by the present project and his involvement in projects such as Scions, Andrew MacKelvie's Many Worlds, Quinton Barnes' Black Noise, and Closed City.
Duguay's output frequently explores memory, nostalgia, and location, both metaphorical and in the more literal sense. His fascination with the particular qualities of different spaces and with different collaborative dynamics has led him to record and create music everywhere from the Yukon Territory's northernmost fly-in community to the lantern room of mainland Canada's easternmost lighthouse, and relatedly has prompted him to explore sustainable methods of recording.
In 2024, he launched the new label Watch That Ends The Night with his frequent collaborator, award-winning Halifax-based musician Andrew MacKelvie (New Hermitage, Scions, Jerry Granelli). The imprint's aim is to foster a spirit of experimentalism and collaboration outside of the boundaries of style while steadfastly maintaining a community-minded business model, an ethos that is reflected in its eclectic catalogue.
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