José “Luis” Vásquez, a California musician who rose to fame with the post-punk project Soft Moon, and John “Juan” Méndez, a popular Los Angeles DJ who performed as Silent Servant, were among the three people found dead last week at a downtown Los Angeles loft for a suspected fentanyl overdose, authorities said Sunday.
Vasquez, 44, has performed globally and at last year's Cruel World alternative music festival in Pasadena. His death was mourned in a post on Soft Moon's Facebook page, which called it a “great loss” and said “our hearts are broken.” Simone Ling, 43, identified in the media as Méndez's partner, was also found dead.
The three were found Thursday at Mendez and Ling's residence at the Pacific Electric Lofts on Main Street after a welfare check requested by Vasquez's wife, according to law enforcement sources not authorized to discuss the investigation. Drug paraphernalia was found at the scene and the case is being investigated as a possible fentanyl overdose, sources said.
“It's very sad for their families,” said Capt. Raul Jovel, who oversees the LAPD's Central Division. “This is a social problem.”
Jovel said some days the division investigates five overdose deaths, and last year officers seized 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine and 30 pounds of fentanyl.
According to Jovel, the homicide is being investigated by LAPD Headquarters. It may take three to six months before final causes of death are determined, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office said in an email.
The deaths came just two days after the deaths of four men at a Palmdale home in another suspected overdose case. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials said their initial investigation indicated there was narcotics use at the home and neighbors said the residence was a regular party location.
Vásquez was born in East Los Angeles and moved to the Mojave Desert when he was about 9, according to an interview he gave to Flaunt magazine in 2018. He played guitar and formed his first punk band at age 15, and later played in others. punk bands. He found success with Soft Moon, which his Spotify bio page called an “unbreakable blend of industrial and post-punk.”
The Soft Moon, which began while Vásquez was working in the Bay Area, released its first album in 2010. Vásquez was the creative force behind the project, which toured Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
He told music site post-punk.com that he wrote the albums by himself and then toured with the other members. He moved to Venice, Italy, in 2013 and as of 2018 was living in Berlin, according to Catherine Herrick, his publicist.
After Vásquez moved to Joshua Tree, the group's latest album, “exist,” was released in 2022. Times music columnist Suzy Esposito called Vásquez a “torchbearer for Cali post-punk.” who “faced his family traumas and alchemized the resulting pain” on the album. On the song “'Become the Lies', Vásquez “attempts to exorcise the memory of his absent father, whose spirit remains stubbornly behind him like a shadow,” she wrote.
Vásquez told an Estonian music magazine in April 2023 that he had moved back to Los Angeles, where he lived in a dorm room that he converted into a studio.
Mendez, 46, was a pioneer in Los Angeles' underground techno music scene and co-founded two influential local record labels, Sandwell District and Jealous God, since the early 2000s, according to a Times profile published in 2018.
The last decade he toured large venues and European festivals between breaks in Berlin or California. Feeling exhausted, he returned to Los Angeles, where he released “Shadows of Death and Desire,” a 2018 album that Times music writer August Brown called a “bold, emotional dispatch from the early hours of the L.A. subway.” . It has a wild sound but often a tender tone and takes into account the toll that a life in club music can take on your spirit.”
Mendez recently released a new single, but told Brown in 2018 that he was taking a break from the full-time DJ lifestyle.
“Something that isn't talked about a lot in nightlife culture is how hard they push you,” Mendez said. “You are malfunctioning, the hours are ungodly. Our jobs are open bar with anything at your disposal. “I don't have a lot of anxiety, but sometimes you just don't feel like doing it and you get into that headspace where you have to fake it so you don't put people off.”
