Composer and producer Michael Cloud Duguay first gained recognition as a vital force within the early 2000’s Canadian DIY music community, contributing to dozens of critically acclaimed recording and performance projects as a producer, arranger, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist.
Following his beloved solo debut Heavy On The Glory (2012), Duguay spent nearly a decade grappling with severe mental illness and addiction but his commitment to music prevailed and ushered in a new era of creativity. His newfound momentum brought on a thirst for exploration that has since led him to expand his practice well beyond his foundations in folk and rock settings. With his recent immersion in improv-driven ensemble music and sprawling site-specific production projects, as well as curation and presenting, Duguay has situated himself at a focal intersection within the experimental music landscape. His highly distinct creative process has helped give shape to a prolificacy of Canadian music projects and his panoramic vision for album production and cultural organizing has come to encompass and encourage a vast and thriving national community of collaborators working across genre and discipline.
Duguay's output frequently explores memory, nostalgia, and location, both literal and metaphorical. His fascination with the particular qualities of different spaces and with different collaborative dynamics has led to him to record and create music everywhere from the Yukon Territory’s northernmost fly-in community to the lantern room of mainland Canada’s easternmost lighthouse and remote historic churches all across Newfoundland, and relatedly has prompted him to explore sustainable methods of recording. To date he has crafted three albums almost entirely with solar power in collaboration with his friend and accomplice, engineer Jake Nicoll.
Many of Duguay's projects have been recognized by institutions such as the Canada Council For the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Yukon Sound Commission, the City of Peterborough, the Electric City Culture Council, the City of Kingston and the Kingston Arts Council. He was recipient of the inaugural City of Kingston Artist-in-Residence in 2021, and has also held residencies at Westben, in Ontario and Hakoniemi Artist Residency in Karelia, Finland and the Old School Artist Residency in Hrisey, Iceland.
MCD is currently the musical director for Scions, a critically-acclaimed creative music collective whose various members traverse Canada, and leads the Halifax-based elctroacoustic improv ensemble, Talismanic Episode Assembly as well as the Peterborough-based motorik art-rock group, Valleyspeak. He also performs as a member of the group Global Sadness, and alongside the likes of Steven Lambke (of the Constantines), Carson McHone, Alex Lukashevsky (of Deep Dark United), Fittonia, Sing Leaf, Quinton Barnes, Jose Contreras (By Divine Right), and Lius Rhutilius.
Since 2021, Duguay has hosted Electric Rabbit Radio Hour, a stylistically diverse program from Frozen Section Radio that emphasizes exploratory approaches. He also presents concerts under the Miracle Territory banner in Peterborough, Ontario, following a stint as a booker/promoter for one of Canada’s most unique and heralded live music venues, Hotel Wolfe Island. In 2024, he launched the new label Watch That Ends The Night with his frequent collaborator, Award winning Halifax-based musician Andrew MacKelvie. The imprint's aim is to foster a spirit of experimentalism and collaboration outside of the boundaries of style while steadfastly maintaining a community-minded business model.
