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Anne Clark




Anne Clark ( Croydon , London , United Kingdom , 14 May 1960 ) is a British poet-songwriter. Her first recording was ''The Sitting Room'' in 1982 , and she has released about a dozen albums since then.

Her experimental music occupies a region bounded roughly by Electronic and Dance ( Techno applies on occasion) and possibly Avant-garde genres, with varying hard as well as romantic and orchestral styles.

Clark is mainly a , Melancholy kind of atmosphere bordering on Weltschmerz .


LIFE


Anne Clark was born as the daughter of an Irishman and a Scotswoman. At the age of 16 she left school. She took various jobs, among which as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. Then she got a job at the local record store (and label) 'Bonaparte Records'. Punkrock was just about finding its way into London's music scene and totally matched Anne Clarks emotions.

A further stage of her life lay very close to Bonaparte Records at
Warehouse Theatre , an independently financed stage for bands, always low on cash.
After initial objections of Warehouse Theatre's owners because of the strange pierced Punk scene characters and their leather outfits, Anne could 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 besides theatre, dance and comedy projects and poets.
Anne Clark managed to fill the theatre with artists like Paul Weller , Linton Kwesi-Johnson , French & Saunders , The Durutti Column , Ben Watt (now 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'', together with Depeche Mode .

In 1982 Anne Clark published her first album ''The Sitting Room'' with songs written by herself.
On the following albums (''Changing Places'' contributed as the co-author.
The songs created by this team have since been milestones of mainly the 1980s and 1990s , but even until present day as well, such as ''Sleeper in Metropolis'', ''Our Darkness'' or ''Wallies''.

In 1985 the album ''Pressure Points'' was released. 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 , amongst others. In cooperation with Charlie Morgan, she released the album ''Unstill Life'' in 1991. Charlie died of cancer in December 1992 at the age of only 36, which was also the cause of many planned collaboration projects being abandoned.

After several months of re-orientation, 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 , and last but not least, Andy Bell of Erasure fame.

Just one year later, in 1994, Anne Clark dared a courageous leap into a kind of music she had not touched ever before: acoustic music. This eventually culminated in the release of ''Psychometry'' in the very same year, featuring a concert recorded live on stage in the Passionskirche in Berlin.

In 1996, various artists, producers and DJs together conceived a tribute album of techno remixes, named ''Word processing'', which was released in 1997.

Continuously, she went on following her musical roots and 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 again re-released four years later, in 2002.

In 2003, one more album joined her series of acoustic albums: ''From The Heart - Live In Bratislava'', which she recorded together with Murat Parlak (voc/p), Jann Michael Engel (cello), Niko Lai (dr/perc) and Jeff Aug (guitars) in Bratislava, Slovak Republic .



At present, she is living in Norfolk , United Kingdom .


BAND

  • Anne Clark, Vocals

  • Jeff Aug, Guitarist (and Booker)

  • Niko Lai, Drums & Percussion

  • Murat Parlak, Piano

  • Jann Michael Engel, Cello



DISCOGRAPHY

  • The Sitting Room ( 1982 )

  • Changing Places ( 1983 )

  • Joined Up Writing ( 1984 )

  • Pressure Points ( 1985 )

  • Hopeless Cases ( 1987 )

  • R.S.V.P. ( 1988 )

  • Unstill Life ( 1991 )

  • The Law Is An Anagram Of Wealth ( 1993 )

  • Psychometry ( 1994 )

  • To Love And Be Loved ( 1995 )

  • Wordprocessing ( 1997 )

  • Just After Sunset - The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke ( 1998 )

  • Just After Sunset - Re-release (2002?)

  • From the Heart ( 2003 )

  • Notes Taken Traces Left ( 2004 )



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