Anne Clark

Anne Charlotte Clark (born 14 May 1960) is an English poet, singer and songwriter.

The music created by Harrow that Clark read poetry to, such as "Sleeper in Metropolis," "Our Darkness," and "Wallies," have since been considered milestones of the 1980s and 1990s.

Clark mentions in her autobiography Notes Taken Traces Left that she has no vivid memory of the creative phase of Our Darkness however, clearly remembers the exact time and place of writing the words to her other club anthem hit Sleeper in Metropolis. Clark was set to start touring in the United States of America 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.

Her first album, The Sitting Room, was released in 1982, and she has released over a dozen albums since then.

Her poetry work with experimental musicians 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 created a gloomy, melancholy atmosphere bordering on weltschmerz.

She has been considered one of the pioneers in the spoken-word music genre, as well as being acclaimed for her synth-pop and new wave music, especially across Europe.

Clark 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.

Clark then worked at a local record store (and label), Bonaparte Records.

Punk rock was finding its way into London's music scene and matched her emotions.

Clark became involved with the Warehouse Theatre, an independently financed stage for bands, that was low on cash.

Although the theatre's owners initially objected to the strange, pierced punk scene characters and their leather outfits, she was able to successfully arrange the program.

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.

She experimented with music and lyrics herself and first appeared on stage in Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura with Depeche Mode.

Clark worked with Paul Weller to help set up Riot Stories.

He had put up an article about helping young writers that were unable to be signed up to major record labels.

Clark said that at first the relationship was troubled due to him not replying to her letters.

She announced "After a pretty heated letter calling out his rudeness, I received one back in the same tone."

Clark subsequently said that the relationship ended up being a strong one, which still exists today.

In 1982, Clark published her first album, The Sitting Room, with songs written by herself, the album placed in 11th place on The Top 100 Albums of 1983.

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 all the music as the co-author and producer.

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..

The album features the song Heaven which was considered a moderately successful hit across Europe.

In 1987, Clark went to Norway for three years, where she worked with Tov Ramstad and Ida Baalsrud, among others.

In co-operation 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.

In December 1992, Charlie Morgan unexpectedly died of cancer at the age of 36, which caused many planned collaboration projects to be abandoned.

David Harrow's music of "Our Darkness" is sampled in Benny Benassi's 2003 hit "Love is Gonna Save Us".

Our Darkness has been considered by Fact magazine as one of the 20 best industrial records of all time.

Fact describe it as "An influential proto-house record".