Toronto experimental musician Nash the Slash (aka Jeff Plewman), has died at age 66. Cause of death is unknown at this time.

In addition to a long solo career that ran from 1978 to 2012, Plewman also played in the progressive-rock band FM, who had hits with "Phasors on Stun" and "Just Like You." Known for dressing onstage in mummy bandages (initially worn to bring attention to ramifications of the Three Mile Island disaster), sunglasses, and a top hat, Nash the Slash played violin, mandolin, glockenspiel, electronic percussion, and many other instruments.

In the late '70s and early '80s, he released a string of off-kilter, mordant new-wave/electronic albums that earned him a devoted cult following. Nash the Slash also scored several films, including Roadkill, Highway 61, and The Kidnapping of the President. When Demdike Stare played the Black Lodge at Debacle Fest in 2012, they incorporated Nash the Slash's rendition of the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" into their set. Nash the Slash was a true original, even when he was covering other people's songs. The man eloquently summed up his own career on his website:

My early musical inspirations came from classical music especially Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, the power of The Who, the inter-stellar fables of Hawkwind, the distinctly Kraut-rock riffing of Neu, Michael Rother, Ashra Temple, Amon Duul, and Kraftwerk, the drum-machine innovations of Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come and Silver Apples, the indescribably hypnotic music of Louis Thomas Hardin also known as Moondog, the oblique musical strategies of Brian Eno, and the very first dominant and melodic use of synthesizer on a commercial record anywhere on the planet by Toronto's own Syrinx. Even before the internet, one could scour the world for inspiration and undiscovered gems.

RIP, Jeff Plewman.