popwreckoning

(Entertainment Weekly) — Thirty-four-year-old Gerhardt “Jerry” Fuchs, a beloved fixture of both the New York and Athens, Georgia, rock scenes who played with LCD Soundsystem, !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk), Turing Machine, MSTRKRFT, and The Juan MacLean, died Saturday night in a fall after attempting to crawl out of a broken elevator shaft at a benefit party in Brooklyn.

Fuchs, who also freelanced at Entertainment Weekly, was a house drummer of sorts for progressive record label DFA, as well as a member of long-running Athens post-rock outfit Maserati.

On the Juan MacLean Web site, MacLean wrote: “Jerry was one of my best and most loyal friends. He was hands-down the best drummer I have ever played with or seen for that matter … He was utterly sincere and fiercely loyal.”

According to The New York Times, the accident occurred at about 12:30 a.m. on November 8, when Fuchs became stuck on a freight elevator between the fourth and fifth floors. When he attempted to jump out of the stalled car, his jacket got caught and threw him back towards the elevator shaft, while another unidentified man in the car with him leaped safely to a fourth-floor hallway.

At a gathering for Fuchs’ friends on Sunday night, LCD frontman James Murphy called him “one of the only people we all knew who was literally great at what he did.”

And longtime friend Jon Fine noted, “He could play metal, prog rock with multiple time signatures, aggressive indie disco. … His passing puts an enormous hold on the Brooklyn music scene. The world of independent music has sustained a really significant loss.”

Originally posted by Entertainment Weekly.

A quick session here, but a pretty interesting one. One song, two remixes, yet all three sound like completely different songs. The Juan MacLean is John MacLean, an electronic musician/DJ, who is another member on the greatest record label of all time, DFA. “One Day” is a new track off of his forthcoming album The Future Will Come. An EP of remixes of “One Day” will soon be released, featuring Marc Romboy and The Emperor Machine in addition to Surkin.

“One Day”

This track is a minimalist house tune with deep and dark, half sung, half spoken word vocals. It’s carried a long by a variety of programmed drum beats of various persuasion. The most pleasurable part of this song is the chorus, sung by Nancy Whang, “One day baby you’ll realize that I’m the one day baby…” This track is too short, ending when it feels like it’s just starting. Simple it may be, but it’s an elegant mix of 80s rave and pop. It mixes the aesthetic that DFA drives for, danceable dance-punk, though fusing plenty of disco into the seams, which “One Day” features enough of to pop, formulating a neo-future paradigm of it’s own.

Surkin Remix

Surkin is one of the wonder boys out there right now. Certainly one of the most innovative and interesting DJs/musicians currently making music. As most people are sampling the 80s and bucking that trend hard, Surkin takes a slightly different route. Though 80s can be felt in his seamless and signature tracks, he really takes his style from one of the least inspiring decades; the 90s. His sound follows a 90s rave feel and this mix is the one track repeating on my iTunes. On this track he cuts out everything extraneous and leaves the best part, what I mentioned above, Nancy Whang’s chorus. Sure it’s typical Surkin looping vocals, but you never get tired of hearing it. He builds the rest of his mix around this, with his lo-fi synths, old school house notes and the classic end where the last two minutes have the climactic ending of a grand musical composition; you can’t really describe the sound, you just know it when you hear it. Hint: It starts at 2:59 in this one.

James Curd Remix

This is less stellar than Surkin’s, but that’s to be expected. It’s more similar to the original, a little faster and a little more energy. All lyrics are kept, the song runs through, but Curd adds a layer that sounds like electronic wood winds amongst a background of electronic tinkering.

The Juan MacLean: website | myspace