At Home With: Ron Morelli of L.I.E.S.

April 03, 2012

L.I.E.S. is a gritty, DIY dance label run out of its founder and sole proprietor Ron Morelli's Greenpoint apartment, where we found him finishing takeout and a bottle of Perrier. L.I.E.S. has no website, just a Soundcloud page. The image the label's going for is none. But since its inception two years ago, L.I.E.S.—which stands for Long Island Electrical Systems, in a not especially affectionate homage to Morelli's childhood home—has released a solid, increasingly near-monthly string of raw house and techno records, serious stuff that's gut-rattling and psychedelic, harking back to throwback sounds without being precious about it. Morelli has a peculiar, dark comic's way of looking at L.I.E.S. and its smallish runs of white-label vinyl. He talks about releasing music like it's giving the public a chance to say it sucks; he sees the secondhand Roland 808 in his dining room like of vessel of its previous owner's broken dreams and a sign of his own bad times to come. At the rate he's going, though, and with the quality of these records, here's hoping that day's still a ways off.

At Home With: Ron Morelli of L.I.E.S.