In celebration of Record Store Day 2026, 4AD focuses on an archival release that brings a crucial chapter of its history into full view. Available exclusively in-store on Saturday, April 18, Xmal Deutschland – The Complete Peel Sessions gathers, for the first time, every BBC Radio session the band recorded for John Peel between 1982 and 1985, presented as a 2×LP silver vinyl set.
For British audiences in the early 80s, Xmal Deutschland occupied a strange and magnetic position: a German band singing mostly in their own language, operating with discipline and distance, yet drawing crowds through sheer presence. Their association with Hamburg’s art-punk underground and the broader Neue Deutsche Welle scene was usually asserted by others rather than claimed by the band themselves. What mattered more was how quickly they were absorbed into the UK underground once they signed to 4AD, touring extensively alongside label contemporaries and finding resonance within a scene already primed for severity, repetition, and restraint.
Between November 1982 and May 1985, Xmal Deutschland recorded four Peel Sessions at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, each one capturing a different moment in the band’s rapid evolution. Their first visit came just months before the release of debut album Fetisch, at a point when the group: Anja Huwe, Fiona Sangster, Manuela Rickers, Manuela Zwingmann, and Wolfgang Ellerbrock, were still absorbing the shock of their own momentum. The building itself carried weight: corridors heavy with history, routines shaped by decades of broadcast tradition, and a workforce not always receptive to outsiders.
John Peel, famously, rarely attended the sessions he commissioned. In his absence, the band encountered a production environment that Sangster recalls with biting clarity. “They communicated quite clearly that they didn’t think you were very good, that they didn’t like the music, and would you please hurry up,” she recalls.
By then, Xmal Deutschland were no strangers to adversity. Formed in Hamburg in 1980 – “a tough city,” as Huwe describes it – they rehearsed in inhospitable canal-side rooms, surviving on stubbornness as much as skill.“It was filthy, it was damp, it was cold.”
Zwingmann remembers night drives in an overloaded VW van, swerving toward late ferries, equipment rattling, margins thin. They had also made a decisive choice early on: distance from trends, such as Neue Deutsche Welle, that threatened to flatten their intent. “If we’d stayed in Hamburg and gone down that path, our career would have been over in a year,” Huwe explains. “Because it was a very short-lived movement.”
Their alignment with 4AD followed that same instinct. “We recorded a tape in the rehearsal room and we took it to 4AD,” Sangster recalls. “We didn’t go anywhere else.”
“We were like a group on our own,” Huwe adds. “We went to exhibitions, we wrote books, saw films – you know, enjoyed our own company.”
That sense of inward focus shapes these recordings. A Peel Session, as Huwe and Sangster note, was no place for uncertainty, and the selections reflect that clarity. The opening surge of Incubus Succubus arrives with force and precision, while later sessions stretch into broader terrain, closing with Autumn in May 1985, their first song performed in English. Across all sixteen tracks, the band sounds neither tentative nor deferential; instead, they occupy the space fully, pressing their own logic onto a studio that initially resisted them.
The Complete Peel Sessions now presents these recordings as a continuous document, newly remastered at Abbey Road Studios.The set includes fan mainstays Incubus Succubus, Mondlicht, Geheimnis, and Qual, and is housed in packaging featuring new artwork by Timothy O’Donnell, with band photography by Jörg Bohm.
Tracklisting:
A1. Incubus Succubus
A2. Geheimnis
A3. Zinker
A4. Qual
B1. Sehnsucht
B2. In Motion
B3. Reigen
B4. Vito
C1. Mondlicht
C2. Tag für Tag
C3. Augen-blick
C4. Nachtschatten
D1. Polarlicht
D2. Der Wind
D3. Jahr Um Jahr
D4. Autumn
In related news, Anja Huwe will be on tour throughout March 2026, making stops in NYC, Montreal, Chicago, LA, Mexico City, and more! Catch her on the dates below:
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