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Anne Clark (poet)

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For other people named Anne Clark, see Anne Clark (disambiguation).
Anne Clark

Anne Clark (born 14 May 1960, Croydon, London, England) is an English poet and songwriter. Her first recording was The Sitting Room in 1982, and she has released over a dozen albums since then.

Her experimental music occupies a region bounded roughly by electronic, dance (techno applies on occasion) and possibly avant-garde genres, with varying hard as well as romantic and orchestral styles.

Clark is mainly a spoken word artist, but she also plays piano and occasionally accompanies herself, with piano and voice mixing in a somewhat atypical New Wave style. Many of her lyrics deal critically with the imperfections of humanity, everyday life, and politics. Especially in her early works she has created a gloomy, melancholy kind of atmosphere bordering on weltschmerz.

Early life

Anne Clark was born the daughter of an Irishwoman and a Scotsman. At the age of 16, she left school. She took various jobs, one of which was as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. Clark then got a job at the local record store (and label), Bonaparte Records. Punk rock was finding its way into London's music scene and totally matched Anne Clark's emotions.

Clark soon became involved with the Warehouse Theatre, an independently-financed stage for bands, that was always low on cash. Although the theater's owners initially objected to the strange, pierced punk scene characters and their leather outfits, Anne was able to successfully arrange the program. Bands like Siouxsie and The Banshees, Generation X, and The Damned belonged to the local scene and performed at the Warehouse in addition to besides theatre, dance, comedy and poetry projects. Anne Clark managed to fill the theatre with artists like Paul Weller, Linton Kwesi Johnson, French & Saunders, The Durutti Column, Ben Watt (who is now a member of Everything But The Girl), and many others. She experimented with music and lyrics herself and first appeared on stage in Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura with Depeche Mode.

Career

In 1982, Anne Clark published her first album, The Sitting Room, with songs written by herself. On the following albums, Changing Places (1983), Joined up Writing (1984) and Hopeless Cases (1987), Clark benefited from an acquaintance from the Warehouse: keyboardist David Harrow contributed as the co-author. The songs created by this team, such as “Sleeper in Metropolis,” “Our Darkness,” and “Wallies,” have since been considered milestones of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1985, Clark released the album Pressure Points. It was created in cooperation with John Foxx, who had founded Ultravox.

In 1987, Clark went to Norway for three years, where she worked with Tov Ramstad and Ida Baalsrud, among others. In cooperation with Charlie Morgan, she released the album Unstill Life in 1991 on SPV Records. Tracks included The Moment, Unstill Life, Abuse and Empty Me. This album was also released in the USA on Radikal Records. During 1992, she released a non-album collaboration on maxi-CD (SPV) with Ida Baalsrud, who both played the violin part and co-wrote If I Could; furthermore, there was also a remix of Our Darkness included on the last track of the CD. At the very end of 1992, in December, Charlie Morgan unexpectedly died of cancer at the age of only 36, which caused many planned collaboration projects to be abandoned.

After several months of reorientation, Clark eventually released The Law is an Anagram of Wealth in 1993, once again in collaboration with Tov Ramstad; the other musicians involved were Paul Downing, Martyn Bates (of the band Eyeless in Gaza), and Andy Bell (not of Erasure fame but talented musician and programmer) and completed a major European Tour.

Just one year later, in 1994, Anne Clark ventured into a style that she had not experimented with before: acoustic music. This eventually culminated in the release of Psychometry (1994), which featured a concert recorded live on stage in the Passionskirche in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Continuously, Clark went on following her musical roots and the influences of folk and classical music. Her 1998 album, Just After Sunset, a collaboration with Martyn Bates, featured poems by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke translated into English. This album was re-released four years later in 2002 when Clark regained the rights to the album. The re-release included some additional video footage, although it was of rather poor quality.

In 2003, another album joined her series of acoustic albums: From The Heart - Live In Bratislava, which she recorded together with Murat Parlak (vocals/piano), Jann Michael Engel (cello), Niko Lai (drums and percussion) and Jeff Aug (guitars) in Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

In 2005, Clark joined up with the Belgian act Implant for the album Self-inflicted, on which she delivered guest vocals. The album was released via Alfa Matrix Records, which in the meantime had become her home label outside of Germany. She also appeared on the Implant EP Too Many Puppies.

2006 saw Clark back again in the recording studio with Implant for the EP Fade Away, on which she delivered guest vocals and performed a duet with Leæther Strip's Claus Larsen. And she also appeared on the album Audioblender by Implant, again released via the Alfa Matrix record label.

In 2007 Clark was in Germany to record her next album The Smallest Act of Kindness, which was released in September 2008. It is her first album with original material in 12 years[1]. The album was released in a luxury digipack, a high quality CD album jewelcase-size hardbound book with a fine 4-color matte finish on its cover[2]. This digipack book contains the lyrics for all of the album's songs, as well as over 25 full color photos by the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA), Sofia Papathoma, and Andy Bell, on over 30 high grain pages.

At present, Clark resides in Norfolk, England, United Kingdom.

Band

Anne Clark's live band 2008 (from left to right): Jann Michael Engel, Murat Parlak, Anne Clark, Niko Lai, Jeff Aug

Current live band members:

Discography

Anne Clark live in concert in Germany, 2008

Albums

  • 1982 – The Sitting Room (UK: Red Flame, Germany: Virgin Schallplatten, later: Virgin/EMI; LP)
  • 1983 – Changing Places (UK: Red Flame, Germany: Virgin Schallplatten, later: Virgin/EMI; LP)
  • 1984 – Joined Up Writing (UK: Ink, later: Virgin/EMI; EP)
  • 1985 – Pressure Points (UK: Ten, Germany: Virgin Schallplatten; later: Virgin/EMI; LP)
  • 1987 – Hopeless Cases (UK: Ten; Germany: Virgin Schallplatten, later: Virgin/EMI; LP)
  • 1988 – R.S.V.P. (UK: Ten; Germany: Virgin Schallplatten, later: Virgin/EMI; LP – recorded live at the Music Centrum, Utrecht, Holland, 1987)
  • 1991 – Unstill Life (SPV, later: Virgin/EMI; LP/CD)
  • 1993 – The Law Is An Anagram Of Wealth (Germany: SPV; CD)
  • 1994 – Anne Clark and friends: Psychometry (SPV, later: Virgin/EMI; CD – Live at the Passionskirche Berlin)
  • 1995 – To Love And Be Loved (SPV, later: Warner Chappell; CD)
  • 1997 – Wordprocessing: The Remix Project (Columbia Europe/Sony BMG, later: Warner Chappell; CD)
  • 1998 – Anne Clark & Martyn Bates: Just After Sunset – The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (Labor/Indigo, later: Warner Chappell, re-release 2002: netMusicZone; CD)
  • 2003 – From the Heart – Live in Bratislava (netMusicZone – Recorded at the studios of Slovak National Radio Broadcast during the European acoustic tour on 17 November, 2002)
  • 2004 – Notes Taken, Traces Left (netMusicZone – Audiobook, song lyrics and commentary from Anne Clark's book)
  • 2008 – The Smallest Acts of Kindness (netMusicZone)

Singles

  • 1984 – Sleeper in Metropolis (Rough Trade Germany)
  • 1984 – Our Darkness (miscellaneous, licensed from Red Flame)
  • 1984 – Self Destruct (Germany: Ten)
  • 1985 – Sleeper in Metropolis (Remix with David Harrow) (UK: Ink)
  • 1985 – Wallies (UK: Ink)
  • 1985 – Heaven (UK: Ten; Germany: Virgin Schallplatten)
  • 1986 – True Love Tales (UK: Ink)
  • 1987 – Hope Road (UK: Ten)
  • 1987 – Homecoming (UK: Ten, Germany: Virgin Schallplatten)
  • 1988 – Our Darkness/Sleeper in Metropolis/Self Destruct (UK: Ink)
  • 1990 – Abuse (Germany: SVP)
  • 1991 – Counter Act (SVP)
  • 1991 – Counter Act (Remixes) (SPV; single/EP)
  • 1992 – If I Could/Our Darkness (Remix) (SPV)
  • 1993 – The Haunted Road: Travelogue Mixes (SPV)
  • 1994 – Elegy For A Lost Summer (SPV)
  • 1994 – Elegy For A Lost Summer (Remix) (SPV)
  • 1996 – Letter Of Thanks To A Friend (SPV; Bill Laswell remixes)
  • 1997 – Our Darkness ('97 Remixes) (Columbia Records/Sony BMG)
  • 1997 – Sleeper In Metropolis ('97 Remixes) (Gang Go, Columbia Records/Sony BMG)
  • 1998 – Wallies (Night of the Hunter) ('98 Remixes) (Columbia Records/Sony BMG)
  • 2002 – Blank & Jones featuring Anne Clark: The Hardest Heart (Gang Go/Warner)
  • 2003 – Sleeper In Metropolis 3000 (Gang Go/Warner)
  • 2008 – Full Moon (netMusicZone)

Compilations

  • 1986 – An Ordinary Life (UK: Great Expectations/Ink; 15 tracks drawn from her first three albums LP/CD)
  • 1986 – Trilogy (UK: Ink; compilation of the first three albums, omits two tracks from Joined Up Writing; CD)
  • 1986 – Terra Incognita (Spain: Ink; LP)
  • 1991 – The Last Emotion (Beehive Productions; 3 CD box set: The Sitting Room/Changing Places/Joined Up Writing)
  • 1994 – The Best of Anne Clark (UK: Beehive Productions)
  • 1996 – Anne Clark: Nineties - a Fine Collection (Germany: Steamhammer, later: SPV; CD)
  • 2003 – Dream Made Real (Noble Price/TIM)
  • 2007 – Remix Collection (netMusicZone)

Videos

  • 1992 – Iron Takes the Place of Air: Live in Berlin (SPV; Live Video, VHS)

Further reading

  • Anne Clark: Notes Taken, Traces Left. Fotografien – Texte – Interviews. Edited by Jeff Aug, translated by Martin Müncheberg. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2003. ISBN 9783896024633. (328 pages, in English and German)

References

  1. ^ Anne Clark returns with first new studio album in over 12 years
  2. ^ Anne Clark returns with new album 'The Smallest Acts Of Kindness' and first UK show in over a decade

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anne Clark.
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