Anne Clark

Anne Clark

born on 14/5/1960 in Croydon, Greater London, England, United Kingdom

Anne Clark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Anne Clark

Anne Clark (born 14 May 1960, Croydon, London, England) is an English poet[1] and songwriter. Her first album, The Sitting Room, was released 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. 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 Irish mother and a Scottish father. 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 perfectly 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. 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 collaboration with John Foxx, who wrote the music and plays on the first five tracks..

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 2008 Clark was in Germany to record her next album The Smallest Act of Kindness, which was released in September 2008. At the end of 2010, Anne Clark released the first chapter of an on-going project Past & Future Tense, the first release on her own label, After Hours Productions.

In January 2011 Anne contributed an arrangement of the Charles Baudelaire poem Enivrez-Vous (Be Drunk) to the audio book and radio play Die künstlichen Paradiese ("The artificial paradises"), (Hörbuch Hamburg/Radio Bremen).

Band

Current live band members:

  • Anne Clark, Vocals
  • Jeff Aug, Guitarist
  • Tobias Haas, Drums & Percussion
  • Murat Parlak, Piano
  • Jann Michael Engel, Cello
  • Steve Schroyder, Keyboards & Programming

Discography

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)
  • 2010 - Past & Future Tense Chapter One (After Hours Productions/Believe Digital)
  • 2011 - "Die Künstlichen Paradiese" (Hörbuch Hamburg/Radio Bremen)

Videos

  • 1992 Iron Takes the Place of Air: Live in Berlin (SPV; Live Video, VHS)
  • 2008 - 2009 Anne Clark Live at Frankfurter Hof, Mainz (MMM Film GMBH)

Further reading

  • Anne Clark: Notes Taken, Traces Left. Fotografien Texte Interviews. Edited by Jeff Aug, translated by Martin Müncheberg. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2003. ISBN 978-3-89602-463-3. (328 pages, in English and German)

References

  1. Hartmann, Olga Yael, Anne Clark's poetic technology, Jerusalem Post, May 17, 2000, p. 11. URL accessed on 12 October 2011.

External links

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This page was last modified 07.04.2014 15:28:34

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