Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

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.