Born on 21 June: Anja Huwe, gothic high priestess of X-Mal Deutschland

She was born in Hamburg (Germany) in 1958 and quickly established an abrupt and bewitching style that sometimes sends shivers down the spine.

Co-founder of X-Mal Deutschland, a post-punk band formed in Hamburg at the end of 1980, she has often been compared to Siouxsie Sioux. Like England's Slits or Raincoats, the group was initially made up exclusively of women, and also professed a feminist commitment that was all too rare in the music world at the time. Anja Huwe was joined by Manuela Rickers on guitar, Rita Simon on bass, Fiona Sangster on keyboards and Caro May on drums. They were soon signed by the British label 4AD, after supporting the Cocteau Twins (who were the label's leaders at the time).

Anja, the band's lead singer, was appreciated for her dark (some would say deathly) voice, but she also relied - whether deliberately or not - on her diaphanous blonde hair, which was reminiscent of the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. Until 1990, when X-Mal Deutschland split up, the band's four albums became cult hits, even if only “Incubus Succubus” widened their audience a little. If you've got a gothic soul and like your rock raw and unadorned, and sung in German, check out ‘Fetisch’ (1983), ‘Tocsin’ (1984), “Viva” (1987) and ‘Devils’ (1989).

After the band split up, Anja travelled between Hamburg and New York to devote herself to painting and photography. In 2024, after almost 35 years of silence, she returned to music with ‘Codes’, her very first solo album. Inspired by the memoirs of a Belarusian partisan, it explores - always without concession - themes such as solitude, survival and pain. At the age of 67, Anja has lost none of the apocalyptic urgency she displayed as a member of X-Mal Deutschland.

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo : © Etienne Tordoir

Photo : Anja Huwe avec X-Mal Deutschland à La Louvière (Belgique) le 13 septembre 1986