Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go

When experimental music, as broadly conceived, is described as using old church organs, it would be easy to assume the emphasis could be on extended drone meditations. But there’s a different feeling to Michael Cloud Duguay’s 2026 album Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go, where said organs – seven all told, in various states of repair and upkeep, located around Newfoundland and recorded on site, in combination with general field recordings from those stops – form the basis of a striking variety of shorter songs created by Duguay and a wider ensemble of performers. When the first familiar tones of the instrument appear on “River of Ponds” there’s a shock of recognition, but by then the combination of breathing rhythms and half-audible loops and other sounds keep it from simply being a series of recitals, feeling instead more like strange messages created from a repurposed, cryptic archive. Often the album’s eleven compositions flow into each other, creating an overlapping collage of moods, from the energetic to the stately to the serene, that results in its own distinct aesthetic experience.