"Xmal Deutschland crammed creeping, sinister magic into every minute." - The Wire
“Confirms their maverick status.” - MOJO
“A thrillingly messy post-punk racket” - Uncut
“A welcome return of Anja Huwe’s unique creative voice.” - Electronic Sound
"Mesmeric spoken word, scratchy guitars and penetrative synths. In Early Singles (1981–1982) we see the rebirth of post-punk prodigy Xmal Deutschland and in Codes we see the very beginnings of what could be an intriguing new chapter for Huwe" - The Quietus
"All tight riffs, synth accents, and romantic darkwave appeal" - Bandcamp
This Friday Sacred Bones celebrate the parallel releases of Xmal Deutschland’s 'Early Singles 1981-1982' (including two bonus tracks), and the debut solo album from Xmal Deutschland’s inimitable front-woman Anja Huwe, 'Codes'. Ahead of the two releases, today Anja Huwe shares a new video to accompany the lead single from her new album, entitled "Rabenschwarz".
Directed by Anja Huwe and Stefan Heintzenberg, the video for "Rabenschwarz" (raven black) ties in with the album artwork, inspired by a private collection of photos from the late 1920s.
"We combined old film footage - such as "The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928, White Zombie, 1932 (both public domain) with additional material, filmed in the basement of a derelict bunker in Hamburg" Huwe explains. "We've intercut all the subjects with private outdoor footage filmed at Hamburg Harbor, Brooklyn and New York City." The clip also includes video bootleg footage from early Xmal Deutschland shows, as well as textual collages & text boards, created by Anja Huwe.
"The main theme: "Raven", a classic symbol for black (raven black) stands for empowerment and is also a symbolic transmission of wisdom" she continues. "The raven also stand for the rediscovery of mystical paths. The emerging egg represents fear, but also stands for rebirth."
Watch the video for "Rabenschwarz": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfSXJdXp7w4
‘Codes’ links: https://lnk.to/AnjaCodes
Alongside the release of Anja Huwe's 'Codes', this Friday Sacred Bones will also release ‘Early Singles (1981-1982)’ by Xmal Deutschland. Xmal Deutschland are now marked as forerunners of the post-punk movement and this release is a map of their foundational movements, just seconds before takeoff. The band’s pursuit of something greater is palpable with this release, a reflection of a time that introduced accessibility to new means of making music following the onset of punk. This reissue includes two bonus tracks; “Kaelbermarsch” (originally from the compilation “Lieber Zuviel Als Zuwenig”) and a gritty live version of “Allein” (originally from the compilation “Nosferatu Festival”), which was shared online with a video montage of footage from this era of the band’s career.
Watch the video for “Allein” here: https://youtu.be/6LU6Egw6R6Y
‘Early Singles (1981-1982)' links: https://lnk.to/XmalEarlySingles
More about Xmal Deutschland and Anja Huwe:
“Gothics”—a time before the word goth had even taken shape—believed in the do-it-yourself punk ethos that anyone could pick up an instrument. This, alongside the bric-a-brac fashion of Adam Ant and the long-winded atmospheric malaise of Bauhaus’ 1979 single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” grey clouds were starting to form. And in the unlikely city of Hamburg, a brazen and haunting gang of five women formed Xmal Deutschland.
As any true punk would, Xmal Deutschland’s members Caro May, Rita Simon, Manuela Rickers, Fiona Sangster and Anja Huwe, started the band despite not having had any previous musical experience. When they bought studio time to record their first single, “Schwarze Welt,” Simon was originally slated to be the lead vocalist but failed to show on the day of recording. Huwe—who originally played bass—was thrust into the front-woman position, and begrudgingly agreed: “The only condition from my side [was that] I will never perform onstage… Two months later, they made me without ever telling me upfront. I had no choice.”
The “Schwarze Welt” seven-inch was released on the local punk label, ZickZack, in 1981 and introduced the band as an unsettling swarm of intensity. There’s an urgency in its repetitive dirge, a swirling mania that persists on the b-side with “Die Wolken” and “Großstadtindianer” whose crude synthesiser noises escalate in tension. Most of all, Huwe’s uniquely venomous German vocals quickly became embedded in the unbridled and burgeoning scene of glamorous gloom.
Punk’s independence from the stiff grip of tradition allowed the band to find solace in anti-establishment art and music, far from the conventions of the past. “We as girls, especially being creative in many ways, ignored facts like: be nice, be polite, take good care about your looks. Of course, we wanted to look good but in a different and unconventional way. We were enough for ourselves." However, some tropes were harder to overcome. The association of Xmal Deutschland as a girl band (later with the addition of Wolfgang Ellerbrock who, jokingly, became the token man of the group) gained traction within the media circuit because of their looks: “We were like paradise birds,” says Huwe in retaliation to the tired misogynistic tale. The band’s keyboardist, Fiona Sangster, adds: “To be an ‘all-girl band’ happened accidentally. To us, it was not the main reason to form a band.”
With their peacocked hair and thick kohl-lined eyes, Xmal Deutschland’s music retained both a restlessness and delicacy, transcending any confines of the “Neue Deutsche Welle” movement (much like their colleagues and friends DAF and Einstürzende Neubauten) with the release of the “Incubus Succubus” single in 1982. It instantly became a post-punk classic. That same year, the band performed in London as support for the Cocteau Twins; it was the platform they needed to ricochet into the arms of the ripped fishnet masses. After Xmal Deutschland’s success with four albums on cult labels such as 4AD, Huwe abandoned music to pursue her visual art career. But leaving her legacy in the past was not so easy: “Since the split in the early 1990s, I have been haunted by the ‘Legend of Xmal Deutschland’ and never-ending requests from all over the world, all of which I always turned down,” she says.
Invited by her long-time friend Mona Mur, Huwe reconsidered her decades-long hiatus from music and decided to join Mur in her studio in Berlin. Together, they worked for a year and a half, composing, performing and producing the tracks from scratch which eventually became the album 'Codes'. Integral to the overall sound experience was the input of Manuela Rickers who added her famed signature guitar style and sound.
Initially inspired by the diary entries of Moshe Shnitzki, who, at the age of 17, left his home in 1942 to live in the cavernous White Russian forests as a partisan, ‘Codes’ is about the human experience and what extremes can do to an individual. The thematic extremities cause an erraticism to ‘Codes’—a passing thunderstorm, a cyclonic burst of nature’s force—but one that exudes anticipation amidst the chill. With elegant production by Mur and Huwe and mixing and mastering by Jon Caffery (Joy Division, Gary Numan, Einstürzende Neubauten) epic builds crash and disseminate, the sleek synthesised drones of sound even feel claustrophobic at times.
Xmal Deutschland, now marked as forerunners of the post-punk movement, were never complacent but consistently ravenous in their attack throughout the 1980s. Huwe’s return is no different. Unexpected but long overdue, ‘Codes’ is that missing page from post-punk’s history books, the freshly splayed paint across the decades-old canvas—it is the product of the tireless will to survive on her own terms.
Xmal Deutschland - 'Early Singles 1981-1982':1. Schwarze Welt2. Die Wolken3. Großstadtindianer4. Kälbermarsch 5. Incubus Succubus - YouTube6. Zu Jung Zu Alt7. Blut Ist Liebe8. Allein - YouTube |
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