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LP
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CM 007LP
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L.I.E.S. Records founder Ron Morelli departs the club to investigate atavistic ambient themes in his fourth solo LP and debut for the Paris-based Collapsing Market. For the first time on record, Morelli mostly mutes his drum track 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 missing or 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 eight bony diffusions of Man Walks The Earth mark distance travelled from the gobs of 2013's Spit (HOS 407CD/LP), 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 eight liminal zones of Man Walks The Earth see Morelli switch out immediacy and brashness for a more considered long view of electronic music. In key with his previous work it's a 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 Derbyshire and Daphne Oram's etheric, Radiophonic abstractions, and the parting beauty "The Sun Beats Stronger As Each Day Passes" recalls the enigmatic appeal of Chris Marker's sci-fi soundtrack for La Jetée (1962) as much as Jeff Mills' recent astral excursions. Following Collapsing Market's archival issue of Iranian classical music, iridescent electronics by Ssaliva, and the amorphous environments of Metta World Peace's Zanclean, Morelli's new album presents a compelling perspective on the binds between socio-economics and cultural aesthetics that's reflected in the LP's sleeve art, Morelli's own photo taken from the 86th floor of One World Trade Center, New York, detached and reframed by Ethan Assouline, characterizing the basic human will to rebuild, only to destroy again.
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2LP
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HOS 606LP
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The Disappearer story is an abstract and conflicted one, loosely based around moral codes handed down through generations, reinterpreted, debated and enforced, followed and broken. What happens when a threat is posed? Is the answer diluted to the simple fact of survival by any and all means necessary? Does instinct take precedence over all? This cycle is full of contradiction, feeding back in its most primitive animalistic and oft brutal of levels, with many questions left unanswered. Who becomes the disappeared and who becomes the disappearer? Two years since his last releases for Hospital Productions -- A Gathering Together (HOS 477CD/LP, 2015) -- 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 (HOS 407 CD/LP, 2012) 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.
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CD
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HOS 477CD
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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 déjà-vu loops, brittle noise, fucked rhythms, scrap-metal percussions, pro-one metal synths, and an injection of near-buried Drāno vocal samples, it's a fearsome celebration of brokenness and of amplified surroundings, with 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 toward a future that won't exist. The boldness of the gestures is 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 that 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 2015 by Krikor Kouchian and Ron Morelli in Paris. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton.
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LP
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HOS 477LP
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LP version. 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 déjà-vu loops, brittle noise, fucked rhythms, scrap-metal percussions, pro-one metal synths, and an injection of near-buried Drāno vocal samples, it's a fearsome celebration of brokenness and of amplified surroundings, with 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 toward a future that won't exist. The boldness of the gestures is 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 that 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 2015 by Krikor Kouchian and Ron Morelli in Paris. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton.
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LP
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HOS 405LP
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Comprising eight tracks, Periscope Blues from Ron Morelli 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. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton.
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12"
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HOS 406EP
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Ron Morelli returns to stare down the 'floor with four pieces written during the stress-busting sessions for Spit (HOS 407CD/LP). 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 synth-line.
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CD
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HOS 407CD
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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 clammy hand of a stranger and the intimate paranoia 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." The album features eight electronic variants; from house and industrial tape experiments to saturated metallic beat tracks. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy.
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LP
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HOS 407LP
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