Steve Bronski, keyboardist and co-founding member of the trailblazing British synth-pop trio Bronski Beat, has died, at age 61.

Bronski, AKA Steven Forrest, formed the band alongside Jimmy Somerville and Larry Steinbachek in 1983. All three members of the band were out as gay and sought to counter what they perceived as the inoffensive nature of the era’s gay performers by embracing explicitly political themes in their music. America’s Spin magazine described them as “perhaps the first real gay group in the history of pop”.

RIP Steve.

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