KLAUS NOMI Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Klaus Nomi’s legacy is a mixed affair. On one hand the German countertenor and performer is considered a quirky novelty figure with a falsetto voice and a tangled catalogue of arch pop and weirdo electronics, but to those who recognise his distinctive contributions he was a bold, visionary artist taken too soon as one of the first celebrity victims of the AIDS pandemic. This exhaustive box set gathers together the three albums Nomi released through his tragically short career, two studio albums and live recording, plus a collection released in 1983 entitled Encore. It’s a fitting tribute to a daring talent who might have become a household name given more time on this earth.

Review: When he ran into the enigmatic Klaus Nomi, David Bowie met his match. At least in so far as wildly extravagant styles and ideas go. That's no discredit to the legacy of Britain's lost icon, more a case that his sometime East German musical partner, who died in1983, was similarly Not Of This World. Find the footage of them performing together on Saturday Night Live if you don't believe us. 29 years later, it's interesting to sit down with Nomi's music alone, sans insane visual stimuli. This, his debut album from 1981, explains why Bowie was so excited at his discovery. A vocal range that can give us something like Ricky Wilson of B52s (albeit singing in German) and epic, symphony hall-filling, countertenor operatic highs with equal skill. A set of tracks that are every bit the instrumental partners to those references. It's fun, wild, weird, theatrical, hugely entertaining and musically impressive.