Michael Cloud Duguay and collaborators traced Newfoundland's coast to capture instruments ranging from digitally updated keyboards to one buried under rubble.
Some of the organs Michael Cloud Duguay set out to record hadn’t been serviced in more than a century, including one that was dug out from under a pile of rubbish in a de-comissioned church’s upper gallery. Others had been fitted with digital keyboards and amplification. Either way, these are the instruments recorded throughout Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go, the producer’s new album documenting seven church organs in seven historic churches across remote parts of Newfoundland, a large island off Canada’s east coast.
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Duguay and collaborators Andrew MacKelvie and Dave Grenon covered more than 1,500 kilometres to make it, recording in just nine days in July 2024 after more than a year of research. Their studio was The Scamper – a 1970s RV that Jake Nicoll converted into a solar-powered mobile rig, which they drove right around the island’s remote coastline, out to offshore communities like Fogo Island, up to the northern tip and across to the west coast.
Rather than a straight organ record, the album plays more like an abstract documentary, with field recordings throughout: wind in bell towers, creaking pews and the inner mechanics of the organs. Duguay also wove his informal interviews with wardens, ministers and congregants into the mix, right alongside the pipes. Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go‘s final single ‘Change Islands’ pulls two churches into a single track, using the organs of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church on Fogo Island and Our Lady of Mercy Heritage Church further along the coast. MacKelvie’s playing sits under Grenon’s field recordings of the Fogo Island ferry and a nest of baby birds mic’d from a distance, close enough to modular synthesis that you’d struggle to place it.
“I am almost completely absent from this piece and it is also my favourite – this is one where all of my collaborators really shine,” Duguay said.
Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go is out now.
