One more time for Germany? AMRIK RAI interviews another bunch of German hopefuls who want to invade the sensibilities of the British rock public. Got your Collins' pocket dictionaries ready?
Photos: KEVIN CUMMINS.
THE SHY smiles of Xmal Deutschland are being photographed for a German magazine in gentile Richmond. They sit close to each other - shoulders touching, thought processes in habitual.synch – and indulge in playful but insular banter in sharp German accents.
Xmal Deutschland are five voices - worriers, workers, cautious, determined and intensely private - and five faces: Anja Huwe (vocals), Fiona Sangster (synth), Manuela Rickers (guitar), Wolfgang Ellerbrock (bass) and Manuela ,Zwingman (drums).
Ostensibly, they're out to enjoy a short rest period after a shockingly brilliant performance at Brixton's Ace, but of course, it's rapidly becoming an endless stream of press, radio and photo sessions: John Peel last night, Melody Maker and Sounds tomorrow. For the Xmals, this is all something of a shock.
The last and first time they were in England was as an obscure Hamburg cult band with two singles -'Schwarze Welt' and ‘Incubus Succubus' –out on the German independent Zick Zack label.
Having been discovered by 4AD maestro Ivo, they were Invited over to play a few selective dates with Danse Society and Cocteau Twins.
This time, however, their arrival heralds a considerably different status. Their debut album, 'Fetisch' , has been jostling for place at the top of the Indie charts - coming a close third to the pap and calculation of New Order and Aztec Camera for two solid months. And in the context of such consistently dismal charts, the Xmal effect has been all the more stunning.
The word is out, and Xmal Deutschland know they have to be seen to be involved and in control. Pop stars! They fail, they're too nervous, tense and obviously reluctant participants in let's play public figures. I try to ingratiate myself into the Xmal unit by pointing a microphone at the bassist.
Say something arty Into this, Wolfgang.
"Ja. One gin and tonic please."
A WELL spoken shock of red and black hair, Fiona Sangster comes from Glasgow, to where her mother returned after graduating from Hamburg University. At 19, she's the youngest of the Xmals and her garrulity shows an obvious delight in being able to talk lengthily in English. After a childhood spent in Jamaica, and an adolescence in the heat and heart of Glasgow punk, she eventually settled in Hamburg with her mother.
"Whereas the punk thing seemed a bit jaded back home, it was just starting out in Hamburg. It was really crazy, 'cos the whole scene involved about 30 people all clinging to each other for moral support, it was pretty scary too; my mother lives out on the outskirts so I always had a long dangerous trek back anyway… but everytime we went to a club, there'd be about 300 teds outside, just waiting to kick the shit out of us.
"That was how Xmal Deutschland began… safety in numbers and just sheer love of music.
No, don't print that, It sounds too corny for words."
"First time out we were realty hard punks," laughs Anja as she sweeps aside an impressive platinum blond quiff. "And,we were five girls then, and although It was totally accidental, everyone used to call us a big joke, saying we were pretty and It didn't matter if we couldn't play."
But I had no intention of being this informative… and subtly sexist - by telling you in BLOCK CAPITALS that Xmal Deutschland are a NEARLY ALL-FEMALE band with a TOKEN MALE bassist. But the Xmals stress an Inclusion of sorts.
Fiona: "The Hamburg scene developed into a really ugly pathetic thing, really sexist and incestuous. It still is, they're all prats. But they're the ones we've got to thank for being here today. We just decided not to have anything to do with their sexism and their scene. We just thought, right we'll show the bastards."
And have you shown the bastards?
Wolfgang: "In some ways yes, but there are people who don't ever want to understand. We don't think in terms of boys and girls. Even when I joined, they thought it was a bloody big joke. And now everybody's amazed that we've got such a powerful drummer, just because she is a girl. Everybody can do it y'know ... this is the 20th fucking century."
The baldly physical drummer in question is ManuelaZlwingman. While Xmal were manicuring their initial punky derivative, she was studying political science in alternate spells at Hamburg and Washington DC.
"I wanted to do something sensible with my life, but after several years of studying very hard, I found I was getting more satisfaction from moving and rhythms. Xmal needed a drummer and I liked their music even though I knew a lot of people didn't."
ALTHOUGH XMAL Deutschland's presentation often has, the impact of falling masonry, their origins owe less to the dentist drill etiquette and avant garden parties of Berlin and Einsurzende Neubauten than they do to Wire's embryonic slumming at London's Roxy club.
In Brixton they drew me in and drained me out with a music that, if it wasn't a Thursday, I'd probably have dismissed as little more than a puerile pillage. Just like Wire. But there's a desperate, disarming naivety and a singularly unpretentious intimacy about Xmal Deutschland that somehow waives any rash criticism of thoughtless eclecticism and accentuates their very obvious appeal.
Despite a seemingly endless flow of publicity and promotion, none of the other bands German bands - including DAF....... has infiltrated the British music scene much further than the all-embracing arms of our precious capital. And even then, none has been given such an unequivocal thumbs up as Xmal Deutschland. Only two months ago, Palais Schaumburg played to an audience of 20 at Manchester's Hacienda.
Why?
Fiona: "Most of them have come here with very high-minded attitudes and thought that just because they've been on the cover of NME, they have an automatic right to big crowds. Obviously, people don't take so much notice of the press in the provinces, they don't have to be too cool. The only time we've played here has been as support, and the people that are coming to see us are coming, not because they've read 'about us in NME, but because they've either bought 'Fetisch' or gone out of their way to listen to It. I don't think we're getting any casual observers.
Wolfgang: "Most of those other bands are either too German or too bloody English copies. Now, loads of people have gone really jealous of us in Germany. They wouldn't believe It when we got a contract with 4AD, they were asking us what we had to do to get it" We just went over with a fucking rehearsal tape; anyone can do It."
Fiona: "Once we'd decided to leave Zick Zack, there was a choice of signing with a bigger German label where you have to sell more than just your soul or coming over here. Luckily them - the packaging, the music and the style and we got together to make 'Fetisch'."
FETISCH LIVES In a noisy precinct of subtopian architecture and feverish activity, a couple of streets away from The Screaming metallic collage of the Banshees and within disdainful spitting distance of The Whip-ping mystical platitudes of The Sex Gangs.
Without actually immersing themselves wholly within the punk period, Xmal tap and trigger the essential heart, filter the brilliance and surface with an icy, urgent music… a collection of wide-eyed, trembling impressions and echoes that encapsulate a stern spirit of confrontation, without even trying. It's the only way.
Wolfgang doesn't agree.
"We're echoing the Banshees? I hate 'The Scream'. If you think we're echoing that, there's something wrong."
Fiona sees the point.
"We'll never get away from those comparisons, and they're useful to an extent, it's just when someone stops at Banshee soundalikes that it gets annoying. Nothing we do is that premeditated, we don't have a concept as such, so the music that comes out is genuinely spontaneous. There's no telling what our next single's going to sound like."
Anja with relish: "It's going to be really wild."
Wolfgang with grit: "I hate all those stupid comparisons. It encourages people to expect something from us. So that if we change our music suddenly, we will lose much of our audience. That is sad, but we don't intend to stand still, we're , very selfish and we make our music first to please us. We can't go into a rehearsal room and play the same song for a year, again and again, we'd go nuts. We have new Ideas all the time and we like to work on them rather than do the same stuff."
XMAL DEUTSCHLAND are a kaleidoscopic clash of ideas, stretched In to shape by violent delight: going from A to B in a single terse but illustrative gesture and bypassing completely any facile ostentation and epic construction.
Remember Wire (again)? Xmal parade a similar intuitive amateurism that exhumes primitive passions and interns ascetic technical ,control: flesh and blood from pure pandemonium.
Wolfgang is pleased, the capricious boy.
"That's it, good. The idea is the essence. Whatever the music comes out like, whether it's like the Banshees or Black Sabbath, if you can still see the idea, that's good. For me, sometimes I'm playing very simple things on bass and I feel a bit stupid, but know it's the best way, the only way."
Wouldn't the ideas be more self-explanatory if you sung in English? Wolfgang becomes indignant
"No. It's good because you have to work a bit, it's more two-sided, you have to imagine the voice as another instrument and let the music talk to you. We're not going to start singing in English just to make it easy, y'know. If anyone wants more, all they have to do is buy a dictionary and translate."
Isn't that asking a bit much?
"Why? We have had to do it since ages in Germany with English music ... and even with a lot of German music."
Can you seriously see people bringing along their Collins' pocket Eng-Germs?
"For me, it is Important that they understand. They can do it through the music but, if not, they have to translate."
Without a dictionary I'd guess that most of your songs deal with fairly morose subjects. Are you a bunch of morbid sods?
Anja: I write about lots of sadness, but that isn't everything.
Manuela R: "When people leave one of our concerts, we want them to feel totally drained and shocked, like they have been In a whirlpool. Whatever they have come to see, whether it's positive punk or another Banshees, we want them to be disappointed ... but happy and optimistic in a different way."
If I was describing your music, those last two adjectives would be the last things in my mind.
Fiona: "You're not looking hard enough. We're not nihilists, y'know." _
Manuela Z: "The problem Is in trying to communicate the optimism. It's much easier to sing about doom and gloom, and we're not developed enough to communicate as well as we want to. People are put off by the heavy sound barrier and don't look any further.
Considering the language difficulties and your wilful wall of sound production, can you see Xmal Deutschland ever having more than a largish cult following? How about TOTP and daytime radio?
Anja: "I like to play in an underground band. I don't want to be in a too big and successful band because we've got something very special and I wantto keep that. That's just the way we are ... When we play live we want to show people how we are.
But not really how. We have to keep something to ourselves. I can't really handle being on a big stage. I like singing, but when people start singing along with me I start thinking, God! What do these people think I am? Whatever they think, it's wrong. I'm not made to be a star."
You're the only kind of star; Anja. Goodnight Wolfgang.