Anne Charlotte Clark (born 14 May 1960) is an English poet, spoken word artist, singer and songwriter. Her music is often backed by electronic music, but later she began working with an acoustic band. Her first album, The Sitting Room, was released in 1982, and she has released over a dozen albums since then.
Anne Clark | |
|---|---|
 Clark in 2014 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Anne Charlotte Clark 14 May 1960 |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genres | New wave, dark wave, electronic, avant-garde |
| Occupations | Poet, singer, songwriter, musician |
| Years active | 1982–present |
| Labels |
|
| Website | anneclarkofficial |
Early life
editClark was born the daughter of a Roman Catholic Irish mother, Cecilia, and a mixed Scottish and Welsh Protestant father, Herbert. She has one brother, John and mentions in her spoken biography Notes Taken Traces Left that her mother also had another son who died shortly after being born. Clark recollects her childhood in her spoken biography as being "troubled but loving at the same time". At the age of 16, she left school. She took various jobs, one of which was as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.[citation needed]
She then worked at a local record store and label, Bonaparte Records in Bromley.[1] Joining the early punk scene, she started booking events at Warehouse Theatre, putting on music, poetry, and comedy.[2] Clark managed to fill the theatre with artists like Paul Weller, Linton Kwesi Johnson, French & Saunders, The Durutti Column, Ben Watt (who later became a member of Everything But The Girl), and many others.[citation needed]
She experimented with music and lyrics herself and first appeared on stage in Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura with Depeche Mode.[2] By the early 80's she was performing poetry backed by a band called A Cruel Memory.[1]
Working with Paul Weller, she helped to set up his Riot Stories publishing imprint, and was part of putting together Hard Lines, an anthology of new authors for Faber & Faber.[2]
Career
editAfter signing a deal with SPV GmbH,[1] she released her first album, The Sitting Room, in 1982. On which she worked with Dominic Appleton of This Mortal Coil.[2]
Clarke then began collaborating with keyboard player David Harrow, who she had known from the Warehouse Theatre. Their first release together was her second album 1983's Changing Places, followed by EP Joined up Writing in 1984.[2][1]
Joined up Writing contained the song "Our Darkness", that was one of Clark's most notable successes.[1] The song was put on a list of the 20 best industrial and EBM records of all time by Fact magazine in 2014. Fact describe it as "An influential proto-house record".[3] David Harrow's music on "Our Darkness" is sampled in Benny Benassi's 2003 hit "Love is Gonna Save Us".[citation needed]
After being moved to another Virgin subsidiary, 10 Records, Clark released the John Foxx-produced album Pressure Points in 1985.[1] The album features the song Heaven which was considered a moderately successful hit across Europe.[citation needed]
Clark was set to start touring in the United States in the late 1980s, however, was subsequently in disagreements with Richard Branson which led her breakthrough in America to be cancelled. Nevertheless, Clark has become a well respected artist across Europe, especially in Germany where she has a cult following.[citation needed]
In 1987, she released Hopeless Causes, recorded and written with Harrow and classically trained pianist Charlie Morgan. This was followed by live album R.S.V.P in 1988.[2][1]
Clark had moved to Norway in 1987, where she would live for three years. While there she met Tov Ramstad and Ida Baalsrud, collaborating with them and Charlie Morgan she released the album Unstill Life in 1991 on SPV Records.[2][1] 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.
In December 1992 Charlie Morgan died unexpectedly,[2][1] which caused many planned collaboration projects to be abandoned.[citation needed]
Clark's next release would be The Law is an Anagram of Wealth in 1993. In 1994, Clark began performing with an acoustic band. This culminated in the release of Psychometry (1994), which featured a concert recorded live on stage in Berlin. Her final album for SPV, To Love and Be Loved was released in 1995. A dance remix album titled The Wordprocessing - The Remix Project, was released in 1997.[2][1]
Her 1998 album, Just After Sunset - The Poetry of R.M. Rilke, a collaboration with Martyn Bates, featured songs adapted from poems by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.[2][1] This album was re-released four years later in 2002 when Clark regained the rights to the album.
In 2003, another album joined Clark's 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. This album was dedicated to her late mother Cecilia Ann Picton-Clark (nee. Murray). At the end of 2010, Clark released the first chapter of an ongoing project Past & Future Tense, the first release on her own label, After Hours Productions.
In January 2011, Clark 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).
In 2016, Clark announced she would take a year sabbatical, then in January 2017 collaborated on the song Donald Trump Praesidend (Quack Quack) with artist Ludwig.London, intended as a parody in light of the election of Donald Trump.[citation needed]
In July 2017, Clark headlined the W Festival in Belgium alongside acts such as Peter Hook and others.[4]
Band
edit
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
edit
Albums
editStudio albums
edit| Title | Album details | Peak chart positions |
|---|---|---|
| GER [5] | ||
| The Sitting Room |
|
— |
| Changing Places | — | |
| Joined Up Writing |
|
— |
| Pressure Points | 35 | |
| Hopeless Cases |
|
52 |
| Unstill Life |
|
— |
| The Law Is an Anagram of Wealth |
|
81 |
| To Love and Be Loved |
|
54 |
| Just After Sunset (The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke) |
|
— |
| The Smallest Acts of Kindness |
|
— |
| Homage the Silence Inside |
|
— |
| Borderland (Found Music for a Lost World) |
|
— |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory. | ||
Live albums
edit| Title | Album details |
|---|---|
| R.S.V.P. |
|
| Psychometry: Anne Clark and Friends, Live at the Passionskirche, Berlin |
|
| From the Heart – Live in Bratislava |
|
| Live |
|
| Enough |
|
| Live at Rockpalast 1998 |
|
Remix albums
editCompilation albums
edit| Title | Album details |
|---|---|
| Terra Incognita |
|
| Trilogy |
|
| An Ordinary Life |
|
| The Last Emotion |
|
| The Best of Anne Clark |
|
| The Nineties – A Fine Collection |
|
| Dream Made Real |
|
| The 90's Collection |
|
| The Very Best Of |
|
Video albums
editEPs
edit| Title | EP details |
|---|---|
| Past & Future Tense |
|
| Fairytales from the Underground |
|
| Life Wires |
|
Singles
edit| Title | Year | Peak chart positions | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| GER [5] | |||
| "Our Darkness" | 1984 | 24 | Joined Up Writing |
| "Sleeper in Metropolis" | 1985 | — | Changing Places |
| "Self Destruct" | — | Joined Up Writing | |
| "Wallies" | — | Changing Places | |
| "Heaven" | — | Pressure Points | |
| "True Love Tales" | 1986 | — | Joined Up Writing |
| "Hope Road" | 1987 | — | Hopeless Cases |
| "Homecoming" | — | ||
| "Abuse" | 1990 | — | Unstill Life |
| "Counter Act" | 1991 | — | |
| "If I Could" | 1992 | — | Non-album single |
| "The Haunted Road" | 1993 | — | The Law Is an Anagram of Wealth |
| "Elegy for a Lost Summer" | 1994 | — | To Love and Be Loved |
| "Letter of Thanks to a Friend" | 1996 | — | |
| "Our Darkness" (1997 remix) | 1997 | 56 | Wordprocessing – The Remix Project |
| "Sleeper in Metropolis" (1997 remix) | — | ||
| "Wallies (Night of the Hunter)" (1998 remix) | 1998 | — | |
| "The Hardest Heart" (as Blank & Jones featuring Anne Clark) | 2002 | 22 | Non-album single |
| "Sleeper in Metropolis 3000" | 2003 | 38 | The Mix Volume 2 (Blank & Jones album) |
| "Donald Trumb Is Praesidend" | 2017 | — | Non-album singles |
| "Stop Brexit" (with Thomas Rückoldt) | 2019 | — | |
| "Quack Quack" (with Ludwig London) | 2020 | — | |
| "Mriya an Ode to Ukraine" (with Justin Ciuche and Jann Michael Engel featuring Jurko Marrow) | 2022 | — | |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory. | |||
Further reading
edit- 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
edit- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Buckley, Peter, ed. (2003). The Rough Guide to Rock. Rough Guides. p. 200. ISBN 9781843531050.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Deming, Mark. "Anne Clark Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 9 June 2026.
- ↑ "The 20 best industrial records ever made". Factmag.com. 27 November 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
- ↑ "W-Festival 2017" (in Dutch). Festivals Belgie – Nieuwsblog 2017. 2017. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
- 1 2 3 "Suche – Offizielle Deutsche Charts". www.offiziellecharts.de. Retrieved 7 September 2024.
- ↑ "New Albums". Music Week. 16 July 1983. p. 25.
- ↑ "New Albums". Music Week. 28 February 1987. p. 24.
- ↑ "New Albums". Music Week. 18 June 1988. p. 8.
External links
edit
- Official website
- Anne Clark discography at Discogs