 THE NOMI SONG - DVD
(Palm Pictures / www.palmpictures.com / www.thenomisong.com)
Klaus Nomi was a German musician and performer who ingenuously combined pantomime, opera and new wave with a flair and flamboyancy unrivaled to this day. He is undoubtedly one our generation's greatest and most versatile cutting-edge influential talents, yet sadly remains to this day largely unknown. His star was snuffed out in 1983 at the age of 39 from AIDS. The Nomi Song is a wonderful documentary that does justice to this eclectic icon. It covers his life in New York where he relocated from Berlin and his untimely death and includes many insightful interviews with family, friends and people who worked with Klaus, especially New York artists, performers and musicians. Also included are bizarre interview scenes with his godmother Aunt Trude, who appears as a paper human cut-out with a photograph of her head attached in a miniature shadowbox designed to look like her kitchen, since she was too shy to appear on camera. As with any good documentary, the interviews, stills and historical accounts are accompanied by an abundance of actual footage of Klaus onstage and off, including his performance alongside David Bowie in a memorable episode of Saturday Night Live. The DVD includes a generous selection of extras including extensive additional footage, deleted scenes, full length performances, audio remixes, footage of the documentary's New York premiere party, full commentary and more. Hunt around the menus and you'll even find Klaus' lime tart recipe, which he also discusses in a talk show on the documentary. (Interesting recent side note: Klaus makes an appearance as a animated villainous character alongside Iggy Pop and David Bowie in Adult Swim's The Venture Bros episode Showdown At Cremation Creek Parts 1 & II ). The Nomi Song is highly enjoyable to watch and is a worthy and fitting tribute to one of the most amazing yet obscure talents of the 20th century.
Ron Sawyer
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 FATAL RECORDINGS - Promotional Video
(Fatal Recordings / www.fatal-recordings.com)
This collection of promotional material from Fatal Recordings, the label founded by Atari Teenage Riot vocalist turned solo artist Hanin Elias, is worth picking up if you can find a copy, especially if you're a fan; two thirds of the content here consists of Hanin Elias videos. There are also a couple of films from expatriate death rockers Vanishing, including the classy black and white live footage of "Lovesick" and the 1920s horror film animation of "Cuckoo Spit," which is like a cross between the original version of The Fly and the cheesy animated interludes Terry Gilliam used to do for Monty Python's Flying Circus . Tara DeLong's "Wake Up/Communist Diet" is boring musically, with bland rap delivered over college rock, but the video is shot in an old house that could be straight out of a Tim Burton film. KUNST's "Miss K" is boring on both a musical and a visual level, although their video for "VDPLK" is chaotic and surreal, if nothing else. It's the Hanin Elias stuff that's the most interesting, though, and it ranges from vampire splatter movie parody on "Slaves" to slinky futuristic pin-up antics on "In Flames." A number of her videos are composed of cut-up silent films, with the creepy abstraction of "In My Room" and the Fritz Lang-inspired science fiction of "Future Noir" being the most interesting. There's also a nod to the early days of Elias' career with a video of Atari Teenage Riot's "Revolution Action" that cuts between concert footage and a weird, incoherent storyline about mainstream corporate conspirators with televisions built into their bellies. Fascinating stuff, if you're lucky enough to see it, but unfortunately this hasn't seen an official release yet. In the meantime, a number of these videos are available as bonus features on Fatal Recordings CDs from Hanin Elias and Vanishing.
Matthew Johnson |
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