Michael Cloud Duguay has teamed up with Mathias Kom (The Burning Hell) for a new collaborative album, Closed City, and they’ve just released its title track, ‘Closed City’, ahead of the album’s release on 27 March via Watch That Ends The Night Records.
If you’ve been following Unruly Folk for a while, you might remember we previously interviewed Michael through Scions, so this one immediately grabbed my attention.
What ‘Closed City’ is about
‘Closed City’ serves as the album’s final statement. Disconnection, isolation, and a permanent inward turn. The central line, “We proclaim our home forever closed,” sets the tone. This isn’t a place being shut out. It’s a place choosing to shut itself in. Can’t blame ’em.
The song ends without harmonic resolution, tying into Duguay’s stated goal of “no closure in a closed place.”
Duguay describes the ending as echoing the discordant overtones of an out-of-tune piano and evoking a distant foghorn.
The collaboration behind the project
Duguay and Kom have been friends and collaborators since the mid-2000s, working closely in the early years of Kom’s The Burning Hell before losing touch for more than a decade. They reconnected in 2021, and Closed City is their first full-length album together.
The record was composed during a two-week artist residency in January 2024 on a remote eastern archipelago in Finland’s North Karelia region. The concept was informed by Kom’s research into Soviet-era “closed cities,” intentionally isolated settlements removed from official maps and populated by residents sworn to secrecy.
The album was later produced in St. John’s, Newfoundland, recorded over five days in a decommissioned church, and mixed by Canadian noise musician and scholar Ky Brooks.
Release Details
- Single: ‘Closed City’ (out now)
- Album: Closed City
- Release date: 27 March 2026
- Label: Watch That Ends The Night Records
Tracklist
- ‘City’
- ‘Old Fire’
- ‘Palisade’
- ‘Ice Fog – No Exit’
- ‘Visitors’
- ‘Closed City’
Stay unruly.
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