How do you get this Germany 15 years after the end of the war between two book lids, the journalist Rudolf Walter Leonhardt wondered in the early 1960s. He chose the shape of a panorama: short episodes about the “SPD and Willy Brandt”, German humor, “buddies between coal and allotments” and “wealth issues on Sylt”. As the title of his book, he chose “Xmal Germany”. With the X as a “mathematical symbol for an unknown size”, as the “mirror” noted at the time. Also strongly the subtitle of the book: “Panoramas of a modern world”.
A just founded band from Hamburg feels addressed in 1980. This is what the five women call their group XMal Germany – and play music in a modern world. It was shaped by nuclear paranoia and neoliberal cold in the early 1980s. You can see this from the colors of the television films of that time, the strong orange of the seventies has disappeared, a lot looks matt and gray. Winter is always in Berlin and it rains in Hamburg. What other music than that of XMal Germany should you play in this environment?
The colorful disappears, everything looks pale and dark
On their first single for the zigzag label, XMal Germany deliver a kind of postpunk that pretends that you only have to slide down the Elbe from Hamburg and let yourself be driven a bit to reach England. There are young people together in Leeds and London who develop “punk gothique”: a theatrical side of the punk in which the colorful disappears, everything looks pale and dark. Suitable for the zeitgeist.
Islands with special aesthetics quickly form. In London, the Beggars Banquet label allows his employee Ivo Watts-Russell to found his own label, 4AD. His idea: to search for elegance in darkness, for round shapes and fussed beauty. The Scottish Cocteau Twins are the first to implement this aesthetics, their debut of Garland appears in 1982. Watts-Russell XMal Germany discovered as a tour of the band. He books them into the opening program of the Cocteau Twins and gives them a record deal. Suddenly this Hamburg band is a British indie phenomenon. With the result that your records are easy to have there, in Germany, on the other hand, how well -guarded secrets are copied from cassette to cassette.
The titles of the songs and albums show that this music does not sound mild and dreamy, but explicitly and physically
Two LPs absorb xmal Germany for 4AD, first fetish (1983), then Tocsin. After the music of the Zigzack Singles was already published with Early Singles 1981-1982, the two 4AD plants are now: Gift-The 4ad Years couples the 19 songs of the two albums, supplemented by pieces from the “Qual Zigzag single, still a hit in the Gothic discos.
The titles of the songs and albums show that this music does not sound mild and dreamy, but explicitly and physically. Singer and copywriter Anja Huwe shapes her with her demanding, often almost impatient voice, who motivates to do strange things. To spit in your mouth, for example. With this clarity, Huwe, as the singer, is the opposite of Elizabeth Frasers from the Cocteau Twins, who invents her own language.
Step out of the darkness
Nevertheless, you have the feeling that both want the same thing: step out of the darkness. The dry sawmill guitars from Manuela Rickers and the ghost keyboards from Fiona Sangster are important for the sound of XMal Germany. The drums of Manuela Zwingmann, which can be inspired by Joy Division, can be inspired on the songs of Fetish (produced by Watts Russell). The drummer Stephen Morris, in turn, is influenced by Can and other herb rockers, with which a circle closes.
Mick Glossop takes over the production of the second 4AD album Tocsin, who shaped the sound of the British Postpunk with his work for Magazine and Pil. His influence and the new drummer Peter Bellendir ensure that the tocsin pieces sound fuller and more stringent. To do this, many of them have inviting melodies, “eyes” or “round”, for example, two songs, which also justify that X -Mal Germany is repeatedly compared with Siouxsie & The Banshees. Because of the powerful singing. But also because you suspect that there are some abysses behind the music of both acts: lose your own.
You can find out which albums were still published in May 2025 via our monthly publication list.