RhoDeo 1308 Aetix

Hello,  Aetix continues with females in the lead, todays post is on an artist that got overlooked by her homepress lacking sex appeal or scandal and generally too serious the UK once more displayed it's superficial music culture, had she been born in New York things would have been very different. Well the continent as the UK likes to call the rest of Europe (mostly in a derogatery way) came to the rescue of Anne Clark and did like what she had to offer ......  N'Joy

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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 managed to fill the theatre with artists like Paul Weller, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, French & Saunders, The Durutti Column, Ben Watt, and many others. She experimented with music and lyrics herself and first appeared on stage in Richard Strange's Cabaret Futura 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 (1983), Joined up Writing (1984)) and Hopeless Cases (1987), Anne benefited from an acquaintance from the Warehouse: keyboardist David Harrow, their curiosity with keyboards, synths and samplers led them to create songs and sounds that would provide blueprints for the electronic music of the 80s and 90s - Sleeper In Metropolis........Our Darkness...
1985 saw the release of Pressure Points and a collaboration with John Foxx, the founder of Ultravox. In 1986 she began working and writing with classically trained pianist Charlie Morgan and as well as joining her on her first US tour he also co-wrote material for the Hopeless Cases album. At the end of 1987 Anne moved to Norway which was to be her home for 3 years. The move to Scandinavia opened up further experiments with sound and music and she began working with Norwegian musicians Tov Ramstad and Ida Baalsrud. Along with Charlie Morgan the album Unstill Life was released in 1991.

Anne began working with Paul Downing, Martyn Bates and Andy Bell. With all the many co-writers, the various styles and experiments that have occured during her career, something immediately recognisable and consistent lies at the centre of Anne's work - a uniqueness present in every project which, whilst making Anne never completely acceptable to the mainstream music industry, offers a wholly original artist to the most important element of her work - her audience.In 1994 Anne decided to take the risk of touring with a purely acoustic band and the successful result of this can be heard on the live recording Psychometry made at the Passionskirche in Berlin in that year. In 1995 she released To Love And Be Loved, another magical blending of electronics and acoustics featuring collaborations with Martyn Bates, Paul Downing, Andy Bell and Chris Ellio.In 1998 Anne returned once again to the acoustic and folk/classical influences that have become increasingly important to her expression and, much to the disdain of the major record labels, but the acclaim of her audience and critics alike, she released Just After Sunset - a collaboration with Martyn Bates featuring translations of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Along the way Anne was introduced to Belgian act Implant who remixed Sleeper in Metropolis in 2003. It came to a new collaboration when Anne asked Implant to remix a couple of tracks which were performed  in the Summer of 2004. New live performances with Implant and the acoustic project are ongoing resulting in 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").

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With backing provided by the local band A Cruel Memory, she made her spoken-word performance debut at Richard Strange’s Cabaret Futura in London with Depeche Mode and gained a respectable following for subsequent shows. These early poetry recitations, according to Chris Lark in Rock: The Rough Guide, were "as gripping as the work of earlier punk-scene spoken-word stars Patti Smith and John Cooper Clarke."

Clark’s tales about urban decay and everyday problems set to the moody drums and keyboards of A Cruel Memory resulted in a record deal with the Virgin label Schallplatten GmbH, which issued her debut recording, The Sitting Room, in 1982. For this solid, haunt-ingly atmospheric EP, Clark collaborated with the first of numerous songwriting partners, A Cruel Memory’s Dominic Appleton, formerly of This Mortal Coil and Breathless.

Combining the solemness of The Sitting Room with the pre-techno stylings of Changing Places, Clark, aided by Harrow as well as pianist Virginia Astley, returned in 1984 with the six-song EP Joined Up Writing. Although it became one of Clark’s most notable records, featured her well-known song "Our Darkness," and helped to establish her music outside of England, Virgin, insisting on bigger sales, moved the artist to the more commercial 10 Records label.

Anne Clark - Joined Up Writing + The Sitting Room (flac 230mb)

Joined Up Writing
01 Nothing At All 2:27
02 Weltschmerz 3:33
03 Killing Time 4:44
04 True Love Tales 5:02
05 Self Destruct 4:54
06 Our Darkness 5:21
The Sitting Room
07 The Sitting Room 2:22
08 Swimming 1:39
09 An Ordinary Life 2:34
10 Shades 2:00
11 Short Story (Party Mix!) 1:53
12 The Power Game 0:46
13 All We Have To Be Thankful For 4:16

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Pressure Points was created in collaboration with John Foxx, who wrote/produced the music and plays on the first five tracks. It didn't deliver the record company's expected synergy in sales. Nevertheless Anne delivers a solid album here.

Anne Clark - Pressure Points   ( flac 183mb)

01 Heaven 4:02
02 Red Sands 3:16
03 Alarm Call 3:55
04 Tide 2:26
05 The Interruption 2:34
06 The Power Game 3:06
07 World Without Warning 4:00
08 Bursting 4:14
09 Lovers Retreat 3:41

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Clark returned to working with Harrow and a new keyboardist, Charlie Morgan, who helped her produce Hopeless Cases released in 1987. Here, Clark made observations about life ranging from sexual healing ("Homecoming") to romantic frustration ("Hope Road"), again setting her words to spacious synth arrangements. Hopeless Cases remains a favorite among Clark’s fans.

Clark's apparent hopeless frailty and wanderlust in that picture are deceitful enough to prevent the less wary from a second glance at this piece. However, as time and her further works have shown us, these notions couldn't be less accurate - Clark pours forth a coherent, solid concept which, when properly absorbed by the listener, will cause an upwelling of emotions ranging from empathy and dark humor(Armchair Theatre) to outright tribal frenzy (Homecoming).

Anne Clark - Hopeless Cases  (flac 181mb)

01 Poem Without Words I - The Third Meeting 4:15
02 Homecoming 4:39
03 Up 2:53
04 Cane Hill 4:20
05 This Be The Verse 1:12
06 Now 4:28
07 Hope Road 4:41
08 Armchair Theatre 2:40
09 Leaving 3:06
10 Poem Without Words II - Journey By Night 3:35
 
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previously Wavetrain, Women's Wagon

Anne Clark - Changing Rooms (83/84 * 194mb)

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