Safety Propagandist #14: Ron Morelli
The first Safety Propagandist of 2023 is none other than electronic music producer and L.I.E.S. Records label boss Ron Morelli
Electronic music producer, DJ, and L.I.E.S. Records label boss Ron Morelli is the exact kind of artist that I typically look up to for one specific reason: he respects the historical tradition of his craft but refuses to be locked into the nostalgia cycle that tradition can engender. Francis Bacon did this by steeping his paintings in the history of figuration and then radically re-imagining what the figurative painting should look like. Fassbinder did this by grounding his films in the melodrama of the 1950s and Douglas Sirk and then suffusing it with a transgressive faggotry that shocked and thrilled audiences in equal measure.
Ron does this because he is, quite simply, an electronic music lifer – having worked at A-1 records in the late ‘00s and DJing from that time on, he is deeply rooted the realest and grittiest aspects of dance and club music culture. But with those roots, he manages to experiment with and reconfigure electronic music time and time again. Deeply inspired by Hague-based Bunker Records and its iconic owner Guy Tavares, which similarly wields an undeniable respect for the craft of dance music while also never shying away from deconstructing the form from the perspective of a conceptual artist, Ron started his label, L.I.E.S. (LONG ISLAND ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS, in 2010. At first, it seemed to get lumped into the early 2010s cultural trend of noise bros getting into dance music and vice versa, with a focus on industrial-tinged and heavy as fuck techno and electronic music. Ron has long since freed himself of that notion, and the label is a profound testament to his talent as a curator of both vibes and strange and creative electronic music: the stylistically diverse outsider house of Delroy Edwards, the alien techno-funk of Bunker alumnus Legowelt, the harsh industrial techno of Broken English Club, and even the classic Broken Flag-era of British power electronics JFK all make sense in the context of the label and contribute to its overall aesthetic.
Ron is of course an accomplished producer of music, working in both dance music and in stranger and darker beatless realms (see: his releases for Hospital Productions) alike. Here, we discuss his exit from guitar music, Bunker Records, dancing or inability to do so, Dominick Fernow, the state of the world, and what’s in store for his music and his label.
So, no more need for me to continue reporting. Let’s let Ron do the talking, for himself. Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Ron Morelli into the Counter-Agency of the Avant-Garde.