Morelli, Ron

Morelli, Ron

Man Walks The Earth

Collapsing Market

“L.I.E.S bossman Ron Morelli returns with his fourth solo album and a shift of emphasis away from greyscale industrial to more introspective landscapes investigating atavistic ambient themes - highly recommended if yr into Tod Dockstader, Laurie Spiegel, Chris Marker’s ‘La Jetée’ and Jeff Mills’ recent astral excursions.  For the first time on record, Morelli more or less completely mutes his drum channels and allows his sounds to freely float in imagined air. In the process he crisply reveals a latent, introspective side to his music that’s been occluded by noise in his clutch of grubby sores issued by Hospital Productions since 2013 - back when he changed his address from Brooklyn, NYC to the heart of the Parisian electronic music scene. As such the 8 bony diffusions of ‘Man Walks The Earth’ mark distance travelled from the gobs of 2013’s ‘Spit’, documenting a change of mindset from grizzled and paranoid to a more soberly contemplative and drily poetic expression of self. Composed during 2015-2018, the 8 liminal zones of ‘Man Walks the Earth’ see Morelli switch out immediacy and brashness for a more considered longview of electronic music. In key with his previous work it’s a smart regression of sorts, but this time reaching back beyond industrial music to a primordial sound recalling Tod Dockstader dabbling at the GRM in ‘A Long Walk At Night’, or Laurie Spiegel glimpsing unseen worlds in ’Stone Tools’, while album opener ‘Fear Upon Seeing His Reflection In The Lake’ hearkens back to Delia...

Morelli, Ron

Disappearer

Hospital Productions

***Two years since his last releases for Hospital Productions—A Gathering Together)—L.I.E.S. Records boss RON MORELLI returns with Disappearer, his third full-length. Disappearer claws and tears its way through 13 tracks at 54 minutes long, touching upon everything from cold, stripped-back electronics, to hints of 1990s Hague scum techno, to grim passages reminiscent of early tape minimalists, the amalgamation forming a nasty sonic narrative that reaches an explosive unsettling apex. This is a definitive return to tense, urgent punk roots; the minimal beat construction, unexpected acid burned vocals, and stark atmospheres touch upon Morelli's full spectrum of influences with his signature rusted razor production. Composed over the last two years in various foul states, the album is a fusion of base level hardware programming, open room mic recordings and extensive computer processing, all finalized in the Paris studio of KRIKOR KOUCHIAN. Compositionally, Morelli has fused the brute immediacy of his then-controversial now-cult debut album Spit with intricate compositional cut-ups of cassette culture, the updated crushing production the product of having circled and lived Europe's nightclub circuit for close to a decade. Presented here as a double LP with new artwork, re-sequenced and edited from its original cassette format.

Morelli, Ron

A Gathering Together

Hospital Productions

***A Gathering Together is RON MORELLI's second full-length for Hospital Productions: a ‘techno’ cacophony brought to its granular detail and reduced to its most elemental tonal depths. A cohesive fusion of surreal and feverish deja vu loops, brittle noise, fucked rhythms, scrap metal percussions, pro-one metal synths, and an injection of near-buried, Drano vocal samples, it’s a fearsome celebration of brokenness, of amplified surroundings. Stereo-shifting drones and driving rhythms that tell the stories of those now gone, more a soundtrack for a wake than 4/4 crafted for the dancefloor. There’s a naked anxiety at work that doesn’t turn away from loss, but runs with an excited melancholy that looks to a future that won’t exist. The boldness of the gestures are not to be confused with exuberance. With this effort Morelli has shown remarkable restraint and patience most notably highlighted on title track ‘A Gathering Together.’ An intense cut born from rapid-paced dead-end urban environments that force people together. It’s a calling to do more, include more, and celebrate the many forms within those inconspicuous places. Upon numerous listens, it’s clear the sound design is a reflection of heavy compositional themes that suggest a greater whole. This is hard, dirty techno--humid, reduced, bare bones, yet dense and dissolved to its electronic soil. Heavy without being oppressive, it is the culmination of many elements pulled from all spheres of modern electronics, eaten, digested, and spit back out. Produced at the end of 2014, with final mixdown and additional production in spring...

Morelli, Ron

Periscope Blues

Hospital Productions

Comprised of eight tracks, Periscope Blues is the culmination of a mission gone wrong. Music for the stranded, the lost, those backed into a corner with nowhere to go, or maybe a reflection of sad individuals panicking on a tropical vacation gone awry. Somber yet very tense drifting off radar machine electronics that feel like a blistering sun beating down on decaying beach remains as time crawls on. That or the equivalent to working the grill summers at Jones Beach and stealing from the register just to get a little more...

Morelli, Ron

Backpages

Hospital Productions

Ron Morelli returns to stare down the ‘floor with four pieces written during the stress-busting sessions for ‘Spit’. The muggy, droning welt of ‘Public Consumption’ kicks off with the sound of New York techno shot from the hip, while ‘Another Hit’ vents a vintage era-Regis style built on skull-chipping snares and effluent acid modulation. The album’s writhing batacuda banger, ‘Crack Microbes’ reappears here as an extra-ferric extended Version, sustaining the hypnotic intensity for nine minutes of panic attack acid and febrile cowbells, while ‘’Rushing Again’ escorts us to a close with triplet techno shook down by railgun snares and a grotty synthline.

Morelli, Ron

Spit

Hospital Productions

***There’s so much that could be said about RON MORELLI, his L.I.E.S. label, or the fact that his debut album comes to you via Hospital Productions, but instead, here are some words from the man himself. “I’m a regular guy, enjoy a good steak, drinking beer, and occasionally a game of pro basketball, Republican talk radio... you know...all the good stuff.....” “The music on this record is about immediacy, pressure, monotony and stress. A great deal of the feelings conveyed within come from the fear and repulsion of basic human interaction....like if someone sitting behind you on the plane sneezes on you or being forced to shake the clamy hand of a stranger and the intimate paranoias of the mind and dealing with it or not. Not to make some deep intellectual fuck show of this, as it is not...it’s just stress music...jammed out quick and recorded. Last year, I was staying in an area where all the hookers did their work...all they would do is smoke cigarettes, read the paper, talk on their cell phones, and spit. They would spit...A LOT. I would step in that hooker spit on the way home, often tracking it into the apartment building as I entered. This is where the title of the record comes from.”