Influential Electronic Music Pioneer Passes Away Aged 55

Welsh musician Steven John Harrington — better known as Steve Strange, the magnetic frontman of '80s synthpop icons Visage and a chief architect of the then-blossoming New Romantic movement — has passed away at the age of 55, it has been confirmed by his record label.

As Wales Online reports, Marc Green, the manager of Harrington's label, August Day Recordings, has issued a statement regarding Strange's passing, explaining that the electronic-music pioneer had died of a heart attack while in Egypt.

"We are extremely saddened to announce that Steve Strange died at 11.15 local time on Thursday, February 12, in Sharm el-Sheikh International Hospital, Egypt," Green said in the statement.

"Steve died in his sleep of heart failure. Steve's family, band members and friends are all distraught at this sudden news of his untimely death. Steve's family request privacy at this extremely difficult time."

Harrington rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early '80s as both a member of Visage — who would go on to earn wider recognition for their hit single Fade To Grey (1980) — and manager of the fashionable Blitz Club in central London, from which the "Blitz kids" alternative moniker for New Romantic adherents was derived. His path to fame was kick-started at the dawn of the decade with a featured role in the film clip for David Bowie's #1 hit Ashes To Ashes.

Peers and acolytes in the scene, which had sprung up in fierce (and fabulous) reaction to the growing popularity and acceptance of the punk movement, included the likes of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Boy George, all key players in the brave New Romantic world. Later, he would go on to be similarly influential on the burgeoning electroclash scene of the early 2000s.

"He will be remembered as a hard-working, very amusing and loveable individual who always was at the forefront of fashion trends," Harrington's agent, Pete Bassett, said in a statement to the Press Association.

It wasn't all glitz and glamour for Harrington, however; during his life, the performer wrestled with a lengthy addiction to heroin, a nervous breakdown, an arrest for shoplifting, and public speculation about his sexuality and other such private matters, which he went on to detail in his 2002 autobiography, Blitzed!.

According to Bassett, "Up until last year, he was putting together a book of fashion styles based on the New Romantic movement".

Several of Harrington's peers and contemporaries have begun to mourn the departed muso on social media; see below for a selection of tweets from high-profile friends.