In a statement released this morning (March 25), 4AD said: "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Scott Walker. Scott was 76 years old and is survived by his daughter, Lee, his granddaughter, Emmi-Lee, and his partner Beverly.

"For half a century, the genius of the man born Noel Scott Engel has enriched the lives of thousands, first as one third of The Walker Brothers, and later as a solo artist, producer and composer of uncompromising originality.

"Scott Walker has been a unique and challenging titan at the forefront of British music: audacious and questioning, he has produced works that dare to explore human vulnerability and the godless darkness encircling it."

Noel Scott Engel was born in Ohio in 1943 and enjoyed huge success with his trio - The Walker Brothers - throughout the '60s.

Often remaining reclusive, Scott spent much of the early '70s retreating from the limelight. He managed to release a series of successful solo albums throughout this decade however. In the late '70s, Walker emerged to rejoin the Walker Brothers for the band's last album together.

Scott then re-emerged in the 90’s and onwards with lyric-driven works that, according to his label, "deconstructed music into elemental soundscapes. Drawing on politics, war, plague, torture, and industrial harshness, Scott’s apocalyptic epics used silence as well as real-world effects and pared-back vocals to articulate the void. Sometimes gothic and eerie, often sweepingly cinematic, always strikingly visual, his works reached for the inexpressible, emerging from space as yearnings in texture and dissonance."

Writing about his death on Twitter, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke said: "So very sad to hear that Scott Walker has passed away, he was a huge influence on Radiohead and myself, showing me how i could use my voice and words. Met him once at Meltdown, such a kind gentle outsider. He will be very missed."