MUUD

MB 89 at Godine Gallery

2011-12-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

The latest installment of MB 89 at Godine Gallery

Saturday January 7th 2012

Sunday January 8th 2012

Monday January 9th 2012

7-11PM

As Part of the show

"After Darkness, I hope for Light"

Light evokes many fascinating thoughts, and holds endless interpretations. It is with light that we are able to see; light illuminates our world and allows life to exist. All of the artists in this exhibition are using light as the primary element in their pieces. They provide us with a new forum for discussion by allowing the audience to supply their own associations. With the diversity of light based work being created by artists like Heather Ackroyd, Dan Harvey, and Jim Campbell, we are presented with a seemingly infinite playing field of perception. There is a broad sense of how light can be used, and various subjects that light, as a medium, tackles.

MB 89 is an attempt for Colorusso to play a continuous piece of music that spans the greater part of his life. Unlike a composition with a discrete beginning and ending that may be played over and over, MB 89 is a composition played once, continuously; spaces between performances are to be treated as musical rests. Instead of many starts and finishes there is constant music. MB 89 is the reference point of Colorusso’s life

In his own words;

“I think it started when I was a kid. I had a mild interest in sports. I was amazed to find out that innings get added to a baseball game when there is a tie. But what was really amazing was that they keep adding them on until there's a winner. The thought of a game lasting a few days was great. I thought it would be really cool if the game lasted a year. And what if the game lasted several years? I had a vision of all these baseball players running around in weathered uniforms and long white beards. Now that would be something; to continue a game for the rest of your life.”

Colored Vinyl

2011-12-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

Two Field recordings by Kevin Belli. Both from Massachusetts.

Colored vinyl with digital download.

Physical Here.

Digital Here.

SB 7"

2011-10-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

Sun Boxes on Vinyl

OUT 10.31.11

Two field recordings from Massachusetts

Colored Vinyl and digital download included

Recorded by Kevin Belli

$7 PPD from us

muudone@yahoo.com

or a digital download HERE

Samples Here:

Latest MV schedule

2011-09-28T18:00:00.001-07:00

We are heading back to the island. The weather has not been kind but we are hopeful. Please come out and see Sun Boxes.

Friday September 30th The Farm Institute

Saturday October 1st The Field Gallery

Sunday October 2nd Lambert's Cove

Monday October 3rd Menemsha

All weather dependent

Noon to Sunset.

SB on MV

2011-08-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

Help Sun Boxes get to Martha's Vineyard and we will send you cool stuff. Thank You.

Sun Boxes and Yoga

2011-07-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Dancing Crow Yoga presents Sun Boxes and Yoga.

Saturday July 30th 2011 Sun Boxes will be at the Hidden Pond behind The Whole Foods in Hingham. 11am-2pm. Come experience the piece and do some yoga. Or just come and don't do yoga.

Sun Boxes at Artscape

2011-06-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

Sun Boxes will be heading south in July to participate in Artscape 2011. We'll be there for all three days in the "Rabbit Hole." Please come by and say hi. More info coming.

July 15, 16 17 2011

Baltimore, MD

Coming soon: 7" vinyl and download, DeCordova on August 6th, 2011

Sun Boxes at PSU

2011-04-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

I will be heading north on my 41st birthday.

Sun Boxes on the grass in front of HUB at

Plymouth State University

Plymouth, New Hampshire

April 18th 2011

10-4ish

Sun Boxes at UVM in April

2011-04-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

Just in from Indianapolis and Cleveland. More on that to come.

Next stop The University of Vermont.

April 20, 21, 22 2011

Davis Center Oval

Bailey-Howe Quad

University Green

12Noon -4PM ish

Peskeomskut Park

2010-11-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

PHOTO: PETER ATWOOD

PHOTO: LISA DAVOL

Week two of the Turner Falls Tour was very sunny. All three days were bright and friendly. Thanks to everyone who came out. Looking forward to spreading out this upcoming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the end of the bike path. Across from Unity Park.

PHOTO: LISA DAVOL

Week One

2010-11-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

PHOTO:Brenda Campbell

The First week in Turners Falls was a great success. Some clouds and some rain but lost of really cool people. Thanks for coming out. Two more locations and six more days. Please come back.

9 Days 3 Locations 20 Sun Boxes

For the first three weekends of November Turners Falls River Culture will present Craig Colorusso's latest piece Sun Boxes. At three locations , allowing the participants to observe the piece evolve as it moves its way through the town.

Nov. 5-7 Lawn of Great Falls Discovery Center, 2nd Ave.

Nov.12-14 Peskeomskut Park, Ave. A + 7th Sts.

Nov.19-21 Lawn at the beginning of the bike path.

Here's what writers have written:

Arn Albertini.

Paul Ita.

www.sun-boxes.com

Sun Boxes at Turners Falls MA

2010-10-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

9 DAYS 3 LOCATIONS 20 SUN BOXES

Sound artist, Craig Colorusso, returns to Western Massachusetts with his latest piece, a solar powered sound installation; SUN BOXES.For the first three weekends of November Turners Falls River Culture will present Craig Colorusso’s latest piece Sun Boxes. At three locations, allowing the participants to observe the piece evolve as it moves through the town.

Nov. 5-7 Lawn of the Great Falls Discovery Center, 2 Ave.

Nov. 12-14 Peskeomskut Park, Ave. A + 7th Sts

Nov. 19-21 Lawn at the beginning of the bike path, 1st St

Sun Boxes at Maudslay

2010-09-07T09:27:00.001-07:00

Sun Boxes will be partake in the 11th annual Sculpture at Maudslay

Three Saturdays

September 18

September 25

October 2

Maudslay State Park in Newburyport, MA

http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/northeast/maud.htm

Desert Automation

2010-08-30T20:56:00.000-07:00

The plot thickens with Sexy David Sanchez Burr:

Desert-Automation

An old one:

Time Remap In Vegas

2010-07-15T19:20:00.001-07:00

Still #1

Still#2

Still #3

Still #4

The screens

Again

5 screens, 11 short films, a Sexy Spaniard and myself at The Brett Wesley Gallery in Las Vegas.

Sun Boxes at Important Records HQ

2010-07-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

It finally happened on June 26th, 2010. Three times is a charm as they say.

There was a dog and some chickens. First time for either and Sun Boxes.

A cluster around a bush.

Here's what people said about it:

Thanks.

F I N A L L Y

2010-06-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

Sun Boxes at Important Records Compound. More info soon.

Time Remap Sessions

2010-06-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

Blackcloud is One of Eleven

Last week David Sanchez Burr and I presented Time Remap Sessions and played some live music to a new piece, titled "Ribbons."

Here's what the Las Vegas Weekly said: HERE.

Dry Run

2010-05-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

PHOTO by John Brien

PHOTO by Sean McCarthy

On May 7th we did a dry run over at Important records. Rescheduling in progress.

PHOTO by Sean McCarthy

Sun Boxes Interview

2010-05-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

Martin Connelly does a great interview about Sun Boxes.

Sun Boxes record at Emandee

2010-04-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Last week all 20 speakers were loaded into Emandee in Brooklyn and recorded.

Currently listening to mixes and getting ready for the Important Records gig.

http://importantrecords.com/sunboxes/

SUN BOXES @ IMPORTANT RECORDS

2010-04-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

SUN BOXES will be at the Important Records Compound Saturday May 8th 2010.

http://importantrecords.com/sunboxes/

Time Remap Sessions

2010-01-12T19:05:00.000-08:00

Time Remap Sessions

A collaboration between David Sanchez Burr and Craig Colorusso.

Time remap sessions is a project that re-organizes, time, environment and architecture.
Eleven short pieces of Sanchez visuals and Colorusso audio. The piece is designed to be in a gallery setting with 11 monitors playing simultaneously as loops. A gallery tour is being planned for the fall 2010.

This June the two will join Richard Vosseller for a month long residency at the Goldwell Open Air Museum creating solo and collaborative work using solar power.

The duo met in March of 1995 when Colorusso’s band, China Pig played at Sanchez’s Citizen’s gallery in Richmond Virginia. The local government had been pressuring the gallery space for months and the final blow was delivered shortly after the china Pig set. Around midnight the space was evacuated and all items in the gallery were put on the street. Sanchez was arrested.

Colorusso’s vivid memory of the duo’s final exchange of the evening:

Dave said, “Hey man great set. Listen I just got evicted, all my stuff is in the street and I’m going to jail in a few minutes. But here’s your guarantee. Come back to Richmond.”

The two have been friends ever since.

Sanchez Born in Madrid Spain, David has spent the last decade working as an artist both in education and professional practice. His work has consistently been an entanglement between experimental music and the visual arts. The outcome of which is a series of collaborations and solo exhibitions that are cross-disciplinary and interactive.

Craig Colorusso (b. 1970) Musician. Composer. Improviser. Dancer. Sculptor. After touring the US tirelessly in bands such as China Pig, Olive Grain and Diving Bell, Craig found himself in one too many bars. Although loving music especially loud distorted guitar driven music he found himself in a dilemma about the presentation of sound. So the sound installations such as Tagmusik ( 24 Hour performance in Bethel CT)and Maschine (a composition for instruments and off-set presses) came and the concept was pushed further with CUBEMUSIC and MB 89.

One of Eleven; BLACKCLOUD

MB 89 Photos from Danbury, CT

2009-11-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

Some photos of the cylinders by Ryan Blessey.

MB 89 in Danbury, CT

2009-11-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to an interview with Tobias Fischer at tokafi.

And here's a review from local paper Hartford advocate.

The MB 89 show in Danbury went well. More soon.

MB 89

2009-08-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

MB 89

I think it started when I was a kid. I had a mild interest in sports. I was amazed to find out that innings get added to a baseball game when there is a tie. But what was really amazing was that they keep adding them on until there's a winner. The thought of a game lasting a few days was great. I thought it would be really cool if the game lasted a year. And what if the game lasted several years? I had a vision of all these baseball players running around in weathered uniforms and long white beards. Now that would be something; to continue a game for the rest of your life.

MB 89 is an attempt for me to play a continuous piece of music that spans the greater part of my life. Unlike a composition with a discrete beginning and ending that may be played over and over, MB 89 is a composition played once, continuously; spaces between performances are to be treated as musical rests. Instead of many starts and finishes there is constant music. Thus MB 89 is a reference point in my ever-changing life.

MB 89 is not to be merely conceived, written, and performed. Rather, I have just realized MB 89's presence in my life and have decided to acknowledge it. It will be an ongoing endeavor for the rest of my life.

The first MB 89 performance was a series of live radio broadcasts on the UMASS radio station WMUA. Mike Burke DJ extraordinaire was a neighbor of mine when I first moved to Northampton. We quickly became friends due to our late night talks about music. So every Thursday in August 1997 MB 89 was broadcasted from Mike Burke's radio show.

Since then, the presentation of MB 89 has evolved into a timeless environment for people to enter and exit at will. The concept for this installation is to create a space of subtle movement where people can be part of the environment and absorb MB 89 any way they like.

Three Cylinders of metal and fabric will stand in the room, from within the cylinder will be a Bass Clarinet generating a drone with electronics. Lights will accompany the drone. It will be a 4-hour performance.

The performance is presented in 4-hour increments and is designed for the audience to come and go as they please. It is best to find a space in the room and listen for a while leave and then come back.

Rusted Breath Quiet Hands

2009-07-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

I met Matt in a green room somewhere in Manhattan. I was in awe of his hair. We immediately hit it off. A few hours later we were arguing over who was a bigger Morton Feldman fan. He of course won when he pulled a photo of Feldman out of his wallet. I didn't even have a wallet. A few years later we recorded this in a basement in Connecticut. CC 7.22.09

Rusted Breath Quiet Hands

Matthew Welch (b. 1976) has studied with noted
composers such as Barry Truax, Rodney Sharman, Alvin
Lucier and Anthony Braxton. His compositions range
from traditional-like bagpipe tunes to electronic
pieces, improvisation strategies and fully notated
works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles and
orchestra. He has also taken part in a number of
compositional collaborations with Indonesian Gamelan
composer-performers in Bali and Java, performed in
free improvisation contexts with numerable New York
City improvisers, and played with art rockers in the
Brooklyn underground. Matthew appears on Anthony
Braxton’s 10 [Solo Bagpipe] Compositions 2000 and
three compact discs of his own music, Ceol Nua
(2002) highlighting orchestral and chamber works and Hag at the Churn (2003), a collection of electronic
concoctions. Dream Tigers (2005), a recording of
his most recent compositions, was released on Tzadik
Records' Composer Series. The eclectic breadth of
his interests in Celtic music, gamelan, minimalism,
improvisation and rock also converge in
compositional amalgams for his New York based ensemble,
Blarvuster.

Craig Colorusso (b. 1970) Musician. Composer. Improviser. Dancer. Sculptor. After touring the US tirelessly in bands such as China Pig, Olive Grain and Diving Bell, Craig Colorusso found himself in one too many bars. Although loving music especially loud distorted guitar driven music he found himself in a dilemma about the presentation of sound. So the sound installations such as Tagmusik ( 24 Hour performance in Bethel CT)and Maschine (a composition for instruments and off-set presses) came and the concept was pushed further with CUBEMUSIC and MB 89.

REVIEW from Foxy Digitalis
One of the best things about the age in which we now live is the keen synthesis of various artistic forms. The proliferation of mixed-media work, music video, performance art and formalist theater in this decade is a testament to the willingness of mass culture to embrace a forward momentum in art. Music too has benefited from this collective thirst for ?newness? as demonstrated by the electronic/folk/minimal work of Sufjan Stevens and the glitchy/ambient/avant garde/pop of Dan Deacon. These artists combine styles to create new voices and new musical perspectives while inviting the listener along for the ride. It is a great time indeed to be a fan of modern music.

When listening to ?Rusted Breath Quiet Hands,? the project of Matthew Welch (on saxophone) and Craig Colorusso (on guitar), I am reminded of just far music has come in the last decade. The two long tracks on this disc are spacious yet offer enough subtle melody to impart some meaning. This music is most certainly modern, and the diverse and impressive backgrounds of Craig and Matthew are injected into the tracks as they draw on their collective past experiences and produce music that creates tension without disturbing the delicate, meandering compositional balance. In a sentence, this music is gentle, rolling guitar drones with subdued saxophone improvisations. Although the songs are long and rambling, the duo manages to stay on the message of each track. As they move around telling the story, the sax narration will occasionally digress, or expound but always returning to advance the intended plot.

I experienced track one while driving on a hot summer day without air-conditioning but I had just received some great news so the penetrating heat went unnoticed as my thoughts were guided by the positive vibe of the track. This was a great synaesthetic moment. The major chord, which never changes over the course of the song but does evolve and shift texturally, reminds one that ambient music does not need to be dark or entirely anti-social and I am grateful for the cheerful tone of this album. The musicians allow the song to exist and breathe on its own by restraining their contributions to the germane. As the drone swells, the sax will lay back. Then as the crescendo subsides, the sax will offer a flourish that serves as the auditory bookend. The guitar drones are sometimes harmonic variations, bass-heavy fluctuations, or midrange, monotonal movements. This diverse demonstration of drones displays just how much one can do with only one note. Track one is a less intense Azusa Plane track with sax noodling.

The second track features a soft guitar strum that repeats over the duration, creating a mysterious set from which the sax directs a surrealist play. Where the first track is a sunny, Sunday afternoon, the second track is a more contemplative, evening stroll along a city street. This brings us to the one drawback in the work on ?Rusted Breath Quiet Hands? and of some long-form ambient in general. The ideas contained in each track could be expressed in half as much time, leaving room on the CD for a few more tracks. As it is, I am left wanting a bit more, which to an artist is not necessarily a bad thing but to the listener can be unnerving.

While music is progressing in unpredictably amazing ways and what is acceptable by the mainstream is expanding beyond what anyone could have predicted, artists are finding voices by forging their own paths and creating their own spaces in which to exist. Matthew and Craig are certainly working hard to deliver ambient music that would fit right in at an art galley opening or in the classroom as research material for minimalist composers. 6/10 -- Curt Seiss (21 August, 2007)

Cyclic Defrost January 2008

Matthew Welch and Craig Colorusso come from slightly divergent, yet complementary, backgrounds as improvising musicians – Welch via formal study under the likes of Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton, Colorusso via guitar ambience/noise bands such as China Pig, Olive Grain and Diving Bell. Welsh is on alto saxophone with Colorusso on guitar and their playing meshes beautifully on these two extended improvisations.

Both tracks use simple, unhurried, single chord guitar figures as a bed on which to lay languid, spacious melodies. In the first Colorusso concentrates on a single note – not really a drone as it stops and starts regularly – which sounds like it is possibly bowed rather than played in any traditional manner. Over this, Welch has his saxophone supplying a remarkable range of sympathetic tones. At times he sounds like he’s playing an oillian pipe, at others even bagpipes as well as more traditional saxophone tones. There’s some subtle processing involved, more to create accompanying harmonic tones rather than change the raw sounds. Each line is entered into carefully, remaining as a single note or perhaps finishing with a brief glissando. If that piece was gentle, the second is even more so. This time, Colorusso’s guitar figure develops into simple, naive riffs built around plucking individual strings of a single chord. The mild distortion has been removed and even the saxophone is limited to sounding just like a traditional alto saxophone. For just over 20 minutes the mood is delicate peacefulness – punctuated here and there with some growling sax overtones before resolving each time back to calm beauty. At times, snatches of Welch’s melodies almost sound like a rendition of Ravel’s ‘Bolero’, filtered through a memory of a hazy dream.

This is disarmingly simple music but the sympathy with which the players interact and their ability to maintain an evocative mood for an extended period of time renders the simplicity as monumental.

Adrian Elmer

STRAP PARTS

2009-07-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

Guitar Music by Craig Colorusso. 10 inches on white vinyl.

STRAP PARTS is two pieces that start similarly but end very differently, they're actually the same parts reworked to suit different needs. STRAP PARTS is an example of a concept and its two possible outcomes. Craig Colorusso 03.09.05

Recorded and Produced by Michael Deming at Studio .45 Enfield CT
Mastered by Keith Chirgwin
Painting by APOLE

Review in The Wire
Strap Parts 10 inch. White Vinyl. Muud 1

Craig Colorusso has been around for a while in all
manner of guises, but his newest thing may be his most
interesting yet. Strap Parts (Muud 10") is a
set of two solo guitar inventions that begin with the
same gentle strokes, then evolve in very different
ways. "Strap" lets feedback build around its gentle
curves, concluding in a question more than an answer.
"Parts" resolves itself a bit differently, lingering
over long notes that jet slowly down so much that it
almost sounds like mid-period Loren Connors at times.
A superior effort.

The Wire Issue 260 October 2005