05/31/2026
A visit from St. John's award-winning graphic artist/musician, Jud Haynes is always a treat, especially when he's toting an intriguing New Vinyl release.
Closed City is a collaborative project from songwriter Mathias Kom (The Burning Hell) and composer Michael Cloud Duguay (Scions, Quinton Barnes’ Black Noise), inspired by the dozens of 'closed cities' established during the Cold War. The two Canadian artists had worked together extensively in the 2000s, lost touch, then reconnected in 2021 and conceived of a project which would combine their shared interests in avant-garde metal traditions, drone, musique concrete, folk, and orchestral music.
Duguay and Kom were interested in exploring world-building and themes of (dis)connection and isolation, and ultimately Closed City was composed during a two-week artist residency on a remote eastern archipelago of Finland's North Karelia, in January 2024. In extreme winter conditions, the two lived together in a centuries-old log house at the tip of a coniferous headland, warmed by a masonry heater, surrounded by unexplored rocky islands and a WWII military defense line on the Finnish-Russian border. They were joined occasionally by Karelian kantele player Mammu Koskelo as they developed framing concepts and musical ideas.
Duguay composed the album’s music, an exploratory weave of experimental metal, folk, and orchestral brass, guided at first by the clustered overtonal frequencies of the cabin’s discordant piano, which struggled to stay in tune in the deep January cold.
Mathias Kom - Guitar, Synth, Voice
Michael Cloud Duguay - Piano, Organ, Synth, Field Recordings, Voice
Jud Haynes - Bass, Synth
Jacob Cherwick - Drums
Natasha Blackwood - Baritone Saxophone, Synth, Chorus
Nicole Hand - Baritone Saxophone, Bassoon
Terry Campbell - Flugelhorn, Trumpet
Jo Dashney - Bass Trombone
Mara Pellerin - French Horn
Catherine Tansley - Tuba
Fraser Mccurdy - Chorus
Ryan Kennedy - Chorus
Mammu Koskelo - Kantele
Vinyl: $31.98 plus tax.
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