A riveting mix of taking-head interviews, archival footage, and musical performance pieces, Andrew Horn’s anecdote-heavy documentary chronicles Ziggy-Stardust-cum-Dieter avant-gardist Klaus Nomi’s impact on the East Village counterculture and his betrayal of the “Nomi world” after signing with RCA France. Horn compellingly chronicles the New Wave wunderkind’s ability to tap into a missing link in the New York music scene with an intergalactic shtick and frightening falsetto unlike anything anyone had ever heard before and the man’s 15 minutes (okay, well, it was longer than that) after landing a gig as a backup singer for David Bowie and getting to jam on Saturday Night Live. Nomi died of AIDS in 1983 with very little friends, and while he remains somewhat of a cipher here, his identity resonates in his music. This is something Horn understands, allowing songs like “Lightnin’ Strikes” and “Simple Man” to repeatedly evoke the otherworldly Nomi’s crippling loneliness and search for love. Appropriately bookended by scenes from Jack Arnold’s awesome Cold War-era alien flick It Came From Outer Space, The Nomi Song truly suggests that Klaus Sperber (Nomi’s birth name) came to us from a different time and place.
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