The Hamburg group
Xmal Deutschland transcended the Neue Deutsche Welle in the early 1980s with their own sound that balanced between goth and cold wave. Albums such as
Fetish (1983) and
Tocsin (1984), which the group consisting of three women and two men released on the British label
4AD, are greatly admired in today's retro circuit of postpunk, goth and other 80s music. Singer Anja Huwe stopped
… singing in 1990 and became a visual artist. Only recently did she meet her old friend Mona Mur and they decided to enter the studio together. Extraordinarily, Xmal Deutschland guitarist Manuela Rickers also joined them. Particularly because of her droning and zagging guitars, Codes is not far from the original sound. At most, the hypnotic and slightly bombastic songs differ from Xmal Deutschland by a more contemporary, electronic approach to Mur. Huwe sings as imploringly as ever in alternating German and English and links her own experiences in the lyrics to the notes of the Partisan Moshe Shnitzk, who spent the war years isolated in the forests of Belarus. That personal, but with a view of art and literature, lends a nicely dosed heaviness to Codes. (MR)more
