More on Manuela Zwingman from this All About Eve site: "A 5 track demo tape was recorded and sent to various record companies. The demo contained : D For Desire, This Isn't Heaven, This Trembling Hand, Fate Flies, and No Sleep Until Dawn. Through Manuela’s and Julianne's X-Mal and Jezebel contacts, Red Rhino offered them a short term deal, giving them their own Eden label. After recording the first single in May 85 at Southern studios, Manuela left the band to have a baby, while bass player James joined Test Department. In the 15 months The Swarm existed, they never played live."

From Le Label 4AD... "Après Tocsin, leur second album, Ivo leur conseille de trouver un label plus important et 'ils ont cru que je les laissais tomber!'". Roughly translates to: "After Tocsin, their second album, Ivo advised them to find a more significant label and 'they thought that I'd dropped them!'".

"Hamburg, Germany's Xmal Deutschland impressed Ivo with an "incredibly raw" demo tape whose live power was never completely captured in the studio. Nevertheless, the spiky intensity of the four-woman, one-man band proved compelling enough on their debut album Fetisch (CAD 302) and two subsequent singles--a different version of the album's lead-off track "Qual" (BAD 305) and a re-recorded and extended version of Xmal's pre-4AD debut "Incubus Succubus II" (BAD 311)--to capture the attention of John Peel and a substantial UK audience. Live performance proved to be the band's real strength: Ivo recalls a particularly memorable show from this period where Xmal, opening for the Cocteau Twins at one of The Venue's 4AD showcases, won over a crowd of aloof scenesters in a matter of moments." (From 4ad-(the perfect antidote)).

A bit of rummaging under the stairs has brought my yellowing X-Mal clippings to light; various reviews and interviews from the music press, plus full features from Zig Zag and Record Mirror. Scanning and transcribing to follow...

Funny how the act of casting one's mind back brings back a flood of memories... anyhoo, back in autumn / winter 1994 I'm sure I read in Melody Maker that a band called "Whiteout", who featured former X-Mal members, were about to release something or tour. I remember seeing an ad for a gig in Camden that seemed to be them, but I wasn't able to go. That same evening I was watching The Word (yep, shame) and they had a band on called "The Whiteouts", which turned out to be some dreary Indie tosh, with no X-Mal folk in sight. I may be mixed up about which band was which. Can anyone help?

According to Sebastian Mundt's posting to this archived thread at www.evo.org, Manuela Rickers and Peter Bellendir worked with The Rossburger Report during the period 1992-4, during which time the band recorded sessions for German radio station NDR and helped create the band's live reputation (particularly striking for including something like 25 guitarists according to one posting!). The Rossburger Report contributed a track to the 1997 compilation CD Slow Death in the Metronome Factory, although it's probably unlikely that there was any ex-X-Mal involvement by then.

A one-page but well crafted biography can be found at sonicnet.com... random quote: "The debut Fetisch highlighted a sound that tied them firmly to both their Germanic ancestry and the hallmark spectral musicianship of their new label. Huwe's voice in particular, was used as a fifth instrument, making the cultural barrier redundant."

Entirely unconnected, but for completeness' sake... Rudolf Walter Leonhardt wrote an book called "X-mal Deutschland" in 1961. I bought an English translation of it from eBay; it's a history of post-WWII Germany.

The best X-Mal resource I've found so far is Poison Door... it's got a great photo collection, spanning their whole career, right from the days of the all-female line-up (Anja Huwe vox, Manuela Rickers guitar, Fiona Sangster keys, Rita Simon bass, Caro May drums) and their multicoloured hair. The biography is in German (which I can't speak, but I ran it through BabelFish); apparently, Anja Huwe emerged again briefly as a co-presenter of a music gameshow on NDR television.

Family tree: After Fetisch, drummer Manuela Zwingman left X-Mal and teamed up with Julianne Regan (bass player with Gene Loves Jezebel, who supported X-Mal numerous times) as The Swarm in February 1984, later - with the arrival of Tim Bricheno and Andy Cousin - to become All About Eve. Manuela stayed for one record - "D for Desire"... I used to have it on 12-inch, but (out of a mixture of kindness and desparation) swapped it for a pack of guitar strings (Goth Graham - where are you now?).

UK music newspaper Sounds was a great champion of the band (it was through their album reviews page that I first heard of X-Mal), and - when Sounds folded - Melody Maker continued the trend. Two writers in particular spring to mind - Chris Roberts and Mick Sinclair. Mick's December 1983 Sounds feature on the band is transcribed here. Chris Roberts' March 1987 feature from Melody Maker is transcribed here.

Welcome to an X-Mal Deutschland blog. I'm researching, websurfing and collating material on the band. If you have any information (no matter how trivial) or corrections please email them. All contributions will be much appreciated and fully acknowledged. Thanks... and keep visiting!