Tell Me No L.I.E.S.: Ron Morelli on wax and NYC

L.I.E.S. serves as an acronym for Long Island Electrical Systems, a name indebted to the lengthy island strip north of Manhattan where label boss Ron Morelli spent his youth, and where he now resides, in Brooklyn. L.I.E.S. is also an electronic label like few others. Owing a debt to Morelli’s formative musical education in everything from hip hop to metal and beyond, it has the attitude and aesthetic of a punk label, and, over the course of fewer than 25 releases, has helped introduce the world to a relatively slight underground scene that has become increasingly revered. With almost impossible flow, each L.I.E.S. release – by the likes of Steve Summers, Terekke and Morelli’s own project, Two Dogs in a House – may either be heartbreakingly fragile or absolutely head-spinning, the dots connected by an analogue sound at distinct odds with present dance music culture in the USA.

“Truth be told, I was never going to big clubs,” stresses Morelli, deep in label work during a rare gap in touring. “Growing up I’d hear Kraftwerk and Hashim on breakdance mixtapes, and house music and freestyle on the radio. So I was informed about dance music, but I thought clubbing was kind of corny.” Morelli was then inspired in the early 00s by the likes of seminal Detroit group Underground Resistance and, crucially, Dutch label Bunker Records, headed up by legendary and prolific producer, Legowelt. “They were basically squatter punks from the Hague, just making this fucked up party music,” Morelli says. A decade later and, neatly, Legowelt has himself contributed to the L.I.E.S. back catalogue.

As L.I.E.S.’ impact grows, DJs and writers alike are as keen as usual to attribute a genre to its sound, whether that be ‘knackered house’ or even ‘outsider house’. As a man with a very specific vision for his label's sound and aesthetic, is Morelli happy with the reception thus far? “I don’t think the descriptions are off the mark,” he acknowledges. “But saying lo-fi isn’t always on the mark, there’s plenty of stuff on the label that’s not saturated,” he points out. “There’s stuff that sounds like it came from a tape buried for 20 years, but also stuff that sounds like it comes from a professional studio. Steve Summers is very clean, Jahiliyya Fields’ music is rough but clean. It doesn’t sound like it was dragged across the floor and killed or anything. It’s not my job to tell the artist what to record – if I like it, I’ll put it out. You could check out anything on the label and see how it makes sense next to something else.”

 

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“Someone can put out amazing music but be a complete asshole” – Ron Morelli

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Despite a recent resurgence in the feel of an underground scene in New York, Morelli – who is refreshingly straight-talking – has his qualms. As a vinyl-focused label, L.I.E.S. has had serious trouble obtaining good quality wax in a city with a music scene that once thrived on it, forcing the label to import from abroad. “There’s only one vinyl pressing plant in all of New York City. I don’t see it getting better, as it takes a lot of money to run a plant and the reality of it is the return just isn’t enough. The hip hop industry would press so much as it was a 12-inch market, and that world crashed with the dawn of the digital age, and it’s the same thing with dance music. Labels like Strictly Rhythm would press 20,000 copies of a record, and even if you had a sort of moderate underground hit in the 90s, you’d press 5000. Nowadays you’re lucky to press 1000, and if you press 2000, your record did damn good.”

Morelli runs a tight ship of artists, mostly Brooklyn-based. “Generally speaking I don’t really want to work with people I don’t personally know,” he says, commenting on the local feel of the label. “For me, I’m more comfortable working with people I have a long-standing relationship with. Someone can put out amazing music but be a complete asshole or difficult to deal with. I want a generally somewhat close relationship with people I work with, to know what their agenda is or purpose for making music.”

He expresses similar misgivings concerning his own neighbourhood's tendency to hype – and as well as playing parties in London and Amsterdam this summer, he returns to Manchester’s meandyou at Soup Kitchen over the August bank holiday weekend. “It’s great to see that in London and Manchester there’s people keen to put out artists,” he says. “That doesn’t happen in New York. There will be bullshit of course, but it’s so encouraging that people give a fuck. Because here, honestly, nobody gives a fuck. It looks good on paper, but as far as support for artists and DJs goes, it doesn’t work like that unless a big international act comes out.”