Erick Morillo was an aspect of the demonstration Reel 2 Real, which delivered the hit known as “I Like to Move It” in 1993.
Noted DJ and music maker Erick Morillo, who promoted house music, was discovered dead in Miami Beach, specialists said Monday. He was 49.
Officials on Monday were called to Morillo’s living arrangement, where they discovered him dead, police said. A reason for death had not yet been resolved.
“There were no apparent signs of foul play,” the Miami Beach department said. “The cause of death will be determined by the Miami Dade Medical Examiner’s Office.”
Morillo, who was blamed for sexual battery in a supposed assault in December, had been captured by Miami Beach police a month ago. He was expected to show up in court Friday, police said.
Morillo had denied the claims.
“This is a very unfortunate incident where our detectives worked diligently to provide some sort of closure for the victim,” Miami Beach police representative Ernesto Rodriguez said in an Aug. 6 explanation.
For about 30 years, Morillo was a mainstream figure in the realm of house music, the post-disco sound conceived in Chicago during the 1980s and taken for a worldwide ride the following decade by British rave DJs including Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong.
Conceived in Colombia and once situated in New York City, Morillo was second-wave house maker who in some cases shunned its diva-vocal sound (Robin S, “Show Me Love”) for more forceful percussion and world impacts, including name, reggaeton and Latin flavors.
One outcome was Reel 2 Real’s “Go On Move,” also called “I Like to Move It,” which highlighted the patois vocals of Trinidadian-conceived American craftsman Mad Stuntman. It arrived at diagram positions in the United States and Europe.
During the 1990s and 2010s, Morillo was a one-man financial machine in the business, bringing forth record marks, for example, Subliminal and Subusa, advancing and overseeing craftsmen, delivering, remixing and showing up at superclubs as a head of-the-marquee DJ.
In 2005, he helped club Pacha on the Spanish party isle of Ibiza open a 2,665-limit setting in New York when huge dance club were turning into the greatest stages for move music entertainers. Settings like Pacha helped set up for the 2010s electronic move music period, Las Vegas superclubs, and gigantic celebrations like Electric Daisy Carnival.
During the 2000s, Morillo delivered three tracks that included rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, an incidental nearness in the Miami club scene at that point.
At Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas in 2012, Steve Angello of graph besting act Swedish House Mafia presented Morillo in front of an audience as “the guy who taught me how to DJ in clubs.”
Morillo’s dawn exhibitions in Ibiza made him an image of the gathering way of life, and in a meeting with BBC Radio One’s Tong in 2016, he conceded he had strolled the walk, saying his liquor and medication use finished with a dependence on ketamine.
The DJ never appeared to lose his believability with move music puritans. He in some cases performed consecutive with Danny Tenaglia, one of house music’s most adored DJs.
“He would be one that other DJs would want to go and check out,” said Los Angeles radio veteran “Swedish” Egil Aalvik, founder of grooveradio.com. “He did not just play a record into the next record. He would layer sounds and build up, drop it up and built it again.”
Morillo was a music tastemaker who drove move music fans to new specialists, he said.
“People looked up to him for new remixes, dubs, vocal records,” Aalvik said. “He managed and helped promote different DJs. He did all those things that many DJs wish they could do one or two of those things.”
