tech
‘A sacred kind of sound’: inside a solar-powered journey to preserve the music of church organs
Musician Michael Cloud Duguay’s new album was born from a mission to capture the sound of the majestic yet increasingly rare instruments
TL;DR
- Michael Cloud Duguay's new album, Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go, is an audio documentary focusing on pipe organs in Newfoundland.
- The album incorporates recordings of organs, interviews with church members, and ambient sounds captured using a solar-powered mobile studio.
- Duguay encountered unexpected challenges, such as finding an electronic organ in Aguathuna that hadn't been used since the 1990s.
- The project required extensive searching, including scrutinizing Facebook photos, to locate churches with organs.
- Duguay's musical approach involves layering notes from different organs, sometimes resulting in unique, 'sacred' sounds due to variations in tuning.
- The album also explores themes of faith, community, and optimism in the face of challenges like the climate crisis, as expressed by church members.
- Duguay, despite not being a trained organist, used a simple approach, like layering a single note recorded on seven different organs for the track 'Damnable Island'.