Anne Clark – A Poet in the Age of New Wave

There's a red thread running between electronics and words, beats and verse. A path that Anne Charlotte Clark has walked with courage for almost half a century. A daughter of the punk and new wave era, the singer-songwriter from Croydon (south London) forged a singular, peculiar style that today finds noble heirs in spoken-word virtuosos like Kae Tempest.

Almost a rapper ante-litteram, Anne is nonetheless through and through a wave artist, raised on those sounds and that imagery as her guiding stars, even if her songwriting evolved over the years, making her the protagonist of performances that fuse music and declamation into new artistic trajectories. But to sketch a portrait of this atypical British chanteuse-poet, we have to rewind the tape back to the fateful 1980s, where it all began.

Poetry in the clubs

Anne Clark was born in Croydon, London, on May 14, 1960, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father (hence the unmistakable “clipped” accent that would characterize her declamations). A bright, restless teenager, she left school at 16 without ever really managing to adapt to the constraints of the education system. Still, this didn't limit her voracious appetite for music and books, nor her curiosity and genuine need to be engaged with the world around her. She held various jobs, including working as a care assistant at Cane Hill psychiatric hospital, and later at Bonaparte Records, an independent record shop and small local label. She also worked as an editor at Paul Weller's publishing house Riot Stories, and contributed to Faber & Faber's anthology of new writers “Hard Lines”, which would go on to considerable success.

It was a particularly favorable moment: the punk scene was about to explode in London, opening up a new era with its communicative urgency, its critical eye on institutions, and a completely new approach to music, the arts and society itself. In that moment anything seemed possible. So, combining literary, socially engaged lyrics with innovative music capable of transcending genre boundaries, Anne Clark moved across multiple styles while keeping a recognizable identity on every recording. She began organizing events at the nearby Warehouse Theatre, showcasing a wide range of avant-garde music, poetry and comedy, filling the venue with artists like Paul Weller, Linton Kwesi Johnson, French & Saunders, Siouxsie, The Damned, Durutti Column and Ben Watt (future Everything But The Girl member alongside Tracey Thorn). At the same time she began experimenting with her own music and lyrics, building a small cult following, and made her first stage appearance at Richard Strange's “Cabaret Futura”, alongside Depeche Mode, who were rather close to her own aesthetic, built – by her own admission – around guiding lights such as Giorgio Moroder, Tangerine Dream, Roxy Music and David Bowie.

In 1982 she managed to release her debut album, The Sitting Room, made in collaboration with Dominic Appleton of This Mortal Coil, the 4AD house supergroup. Branded on the cover with a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it's a record in which a forward-thinking use of samples (before this even became a codified concept) and electronically treated acoustic textures manage to forge a new style, suspended between refined poetry and icy new wave. A collection of fluid synthscapes, bubbling like lava.

Setting the tone is the splendid title track, which in just over two minutes manages to condense kosmische suggestions, symphonic romanticism and wave futurism. Other high points of the record can be found in the tormented musique concrète of “Swimming”, the dreamlike ambient music of “An Ordinary Life”, the spectral requiem of “Shades”, the fragile synth-folk of “Short Story”, and the electronic lament of “All We Have To Be Thankful For”. A treasure chest of tiny gems (tiny in length too), shining with a dazzling brilliance.

Metropolitan proto-techno

A year later comes the second act, Changing Places (1983), arguably her masterpiece. The record also marks the start of her partnership with keyboardist David Harrow, who would later also collaborate with pianist Charlie Morgan, with former Ultravox leader John Foxx, with Jah Wobble and with Martyn Bates of Eyeless in Gaza. His pulsing synth work gives Clark's songs a sharp, seductive electronic sheen, perfectly in tune with the often alienated tone of her lyrics. A record that still sounds crisp, inspired and measured today. Its grace harks back to a moment in history when poetry, punk, new wave and electronics could converse with total freedom, before cultural identities hardened into closed, impermeable factions. So embryonic forms of raw techno, post-punk romanticism and spoken word blend together, held in place by an experimental tension built on rigorous minimalism. Eleven tracks that sketch an urban landscape marked by social fractures and political tensions. Clark observes the world she grew up in and renders it through bleak poems, underpinned by synths that evoke dystopia and unease.

The album is ideally split into two halves, marked by the productions of David Harrow and Vini Reilly, the mastermind behind Durutti Column. While Harrow gives it a jagged electronic edge, close to proto-EBM and an urban new wave, Reilly brings a more guitar-driven, ethereal, atmospheric touch.

From the first half emerges above all "Sleeper In Metropolis", one of Clark's best-known tracks: an alienated, claustrophobic anthem weaving austere sequencers and synthetic beats together with a desolate, estranging delivery. A far-sighted essay in proto-techno and proto-trance, it would go on to become a classic in the clubs of Berlin, Chicago and the legendary Starck in Dallas.

Elsewhere, Harrow dials down the rhythmic component: the aching "Poem For A Nuclear Romance" conjures a suspended landscape, with ambient synths recalling certain Berlin-era atmospheres of David Bowie; the apocalyptic romanticism of the lyrics, filled with red skies and creatures resurfacing from underground, reflects the shadow of nuclear annihilation, a constant nightmare in the new wave imagination of the time. But "Poem For A Nuclear Romance" also distils the mood of the whole album, where hallucinated visions coexist with images of ordinary daily life. Many lyrics on Changing Places depict the banality of adult life in the British working class: mediocre men and frustration (the propulsive "Wallies"), meaningless casual encounters ("Lovers Auditions"), endless, aimless parties ("All Night Party"). Stories that expose structures of power and mechanisms of exclusion: oppression, misogyny, homophobia. The ordinary thus becomes poetic material in Clark's writing, which always resists academic rhetoric and self-indulgence. Her vocabulary is born from the concrete experience of everyday life, from social conflict. She even dares to rhyme, a choice that might seem to go against the grain today, but which here sounds entirely natural.

Beyond anticipating later developments in darkwave and EBM, Changing Places documents an era when poetry could still inhabit clubs, not just symposiums and university lecture halls. An era of vibrant vitality and omnivorous curiosity that would gradually fade away in the years that followed.

A year later came Joined Up Writing (1984), another excellent work built on icy, menacing synths, with the exception of the overture of "Nothing At All", dominated by more complex instrumentation, where even the violins seem to emulate the desolate synthetic minimalism of the synths. Anne shows real growth in her spoken-word delivery, also mixed more effectively than in her earliest work, highlighting her razor-sharp timbre, with a crystalline clarity that cuts through the soundscapes without ever overwhelming them. In "Weltschmerz" – a title that refers to the melancholy felt when the world isn't the way we'd like it to be – the sonic skeleton grows even sparser, with ghostly choirs serving as the (almost) sole counterpoint to Anne's spoken delivery, until, in "Killing Time", liturgical keyboards rise up to accompany her sinister mantra. The delivery turns almost nursery-rhyme-like in "True Love Tales", trance-repeating the lines "Love is just a paradox/ He loves me, he loves me not", before the arrival of the new, driving beats of "Self Destruct".

"Our Darkness" is the key moment, an imposing, sumptuous closing track, with its neurotic, hammering electro-disco synth textures over which Clark's solemn, anguished delivery looms, evoking new dystopian scenarios, while a searing sax solo tears through the electronic fabric. Another fitting anthem for the entire Cold War era.

Alongside the Quiet Man

Thanks to these first three records, Anne Clark's stock rises rapidly. It's no coincidence that, to produce the following Pressure Points (1985), she enlists none other than The Quiet Man, aka John Foxx, former Ultravox leader, by then deep into a daring solo career launched with the masterpiece "Metamatic" (1980) and, that very year, about to take a dramatic turn with "In Mysterious Ways", an album in which simple pop melodies and acoustic instrumentation replaced the futurist angularity and sampling of his earlier work.

On Pressure Points Foxx not only produces 8 of the 9 tracks, but also writes all the music for side A. And it stands as a kind of perfect counterpart to his "In Mysterious Ways": as quiet and almost pastoral as the mood of that record is, just as tense and neurotically urban is the atmosphere running through the grooves of the English poet's fourth album.

Otherwise, the classic Clark formula returns (lyrics declaimed over electronic carpets), serving a sonic coherence guaranteed by Foxx and palpable from the opening "Heaven", which unwinds through pulsing synths, treated bass and drum machine, building to a final crescendo of piano and synthetic strings that explodes into a powerful, reverb-drenched riff for a highly theatrical close. "Red Sands" accelerates further, driven by hammering drums and jittery, nervous bass lines, while in "Alarm Call" the energy settles into a more controlled structure, underpinned by orchestral samples accompanying a more intimate lyric. "Tide" opts for a slow pace, awash in piano and hazy strings, while the words describe a persistent unease, and "The Interruption" closes side A with a pace that is both martial and minimalist, heightening its reflective character.

On side B comes a new version of "The Power Game", the only track not produced by Foxx, yet one of the most striking of the bunch, with a sweeping string arrangement and an almost chamber-pop feel. "World Without Warning" follows the same path with an austere, solemn delivery, before "Bursting" bursts in with unexpected euphoria, amid programmed beats and quick hi-hat strikes, matching the sensual charge of the lyrics. "Lovers Retreat" closes the record, with softer, muted tones easing the constant tension that runs through the album.

Overall, another compelling collection of bile-laced electronic poems, in which Clark's cutting delivery often veers into invective, sealing that sense of latent tension typical of Thatcherite England in those years. A context in which Anne moves about "frightened by streets that breed malice and hatred" ("Red Sands"), in a world that is "an open prison where I walk back and forth/ as if through a tunnel, because there's nowhere I can go" ("Alarm Call"). Even her relationships with others are fraught with conflict: "I don't associate myself with all the people I can do without/ those who never leave me in any doubt, who only care about their own little selfish lives" ("World Without Warning"). And so on.

Two years later came Hopeless Cases (1987), on which the formula starts to show a few cracks, especially in the passages that aim for a more pronounced sonic solemnity, as happens on "Now", where the heavy-handed production tends to stiffen the emotional framework. Still, on most of the tracks the album retains its charm intact, making for a listen that remains engaging today, albeit tinged with a faint nostalgic patina. Clark partly drifts away from the shadowy shores of strict coldwave to venture into a more ethereal, hazy darkness, as the following album, Unstill Life, released four years later, would go on to confirm.

Hopeless Cases can therefore be seen as a transitional album, with less pronounced rhythms and lyrics that take an even more central role, underpinned by more hazy, downtempo sounds. A "quiet desperation", to borrow from Pink Floyd, that distills into the subdued unease of a track like "Up".

After all, by 1987 new wave was already on the wane, and the need to strike out in new directions was being felt. Still, there's no shortage of new alternative-club hits, such as the driving "Homecoming", with its danceable gait and immediate chorus sealing an effective balance between electronic pulse and melodic tension, while "Now" toys with arpeggios and vocal choruses in much the same way the songs on R Plus Seven did. But the album's high point is probably "Cane Hill", the track inspired by her work at the London psychiatric hospital of the same name, in which the electronic component grows more rarefied, making room for a spectral aura, with Clark's spoken delivery reaching a harrowing intensity as she evokes all the distress of illness and isolation: “Here/ Upon these ghostly shadows/ Of men and women/ There are no smiles/ Singly/ They mingle/ With the greyness of the walls/ And at strange angles/ They travel on/ To nowhere/ Each a nucleus/ Of sadness and despair”.

A zen approach

Starting in 1987, Anne relocated to Norway, where she spent three years working on various projects with musicians Tov Ramstad and Ida Baalsrud. And it's precisely the minimalist influences of Scandinavian jazz that permeate Unstill Life (1991), her new work made in collaboration with pianist Charlie Morgan, who would die of cancer a year later, at just thirty-six.

Anne returned after four difficult years: a forced hiatus brought on by a head-on clash with the music industry. Disputes with Richard Branson had also scuppered a US tour that was meant to introduce her art to audiences on the other side of the Atlantic. Inevitably, Unstill Life bears the scars of this troubled passage: an album marked by introspection and gloom, but also by a fierce determination and a strong creative vitality.

The songs' themes revolve around observing the world around her, its most peculiar manifestations, unease, and other personal states of mind experienced by the author. The result is a set of new, evocative spoken pieces, underpinned by the usual electronic carpets, but also by instruments such as double bass, violin and cello, for a new electroacoustic combination that relaunches Anne Clark's art into the new decade. The outcome is, all in all, convincing, both when negative emotions prevail - in the earlier compositions - and when, with her powerful, evocative voice, the British poet conveys decidedly more optimistic content.

Among the most engaging tracks are "Empty Me" and "Abuse", in which Clark brings a delivery of particular expressive intensity, while on the title track she favours a more choral approach, backed by new musicians, and on "Nida" she embraces fresh Eastern-tinged nuances.

At the heart of it all remain her spoken-word pieces, which in some ways recall those of Laurie Anderson. But while the American singer-songwriter-performer is also an actress who "performs" her lyrics in a wholly singular way, Clark favours a more detached, monotone approach, building atmospheres by stressing individual phrases and words. Unstill Life nonetheless marks a turning point in her career, sealed by the album's release in the United States as well, through Radikal Records.

Her gradual move away from the hardline electronics of her early work led Clark to tour in 1994 with an entirely acoustic band, an experience documented on the live album Psychometry, recorded at the Passionskirche in Berlin and dominated by new folk and avant-garde influences.

A year earlier, though, came the studio album The Law Is An Anagram Of Wealth (1993), which let more expansive sounds emerge, in some ways close to neoclassical music, although the artist herself was quick to clarify: "I don't think I'm akin to that sound, it's more a kind of minimal preference: less is more. We're so overloaded with everything that sometimes I feel the need to strip things down to the essentials. To keep them pure and simple, without frills. I'd call it more of a zen approach."

The fact remains that the classically inclined, solo-cello introduction of the instrumental "Introduction/ Flight Through Sunlit Clouds" will come as a surprise to anyone who has always filed Clark away under "electronic". The cello takes centre stage again on two other tracks ("So Quiet Here", "Come In"), as well as in the slender Eastern filigree of "At Midnight" and "Lost To The World".

What's certain is that Clark confirms electronics are not the only vehicle for her spoken word, proving just as at ease with acoustic instruments and combining both dimensions. Indeed, for the half of the album made up of readings of poems by Friedrich Rückert (the 19th-century German Romantic poet and scholar) she relies mainly on acoustic instruments, while for the other pieces, which bear her own signature, she makes use of a more electronic backing. Lending her a hand this time is Martyn Bates of Eyeless In Gaza, a post-punk outfit formed in the 1980s.

The paradox, though, is that Clark seems most inspired precisely when looking backward: to the most twilight strain of new wave (the poignant "Fragility"), to proto-techno (the hammering pulses of "The Haunted Road", chosen as a single and the subject of several remixes), to electropop, with the sinuous cadences of "Nightship" and the even more compelling "Seize The Vivid Sky", almost a new "Our Darkness" urging moral rebellion by expanding on the concept that gives the album its title: “Take in every breath deep enough to fly/ Away from lies these changes/ have forced into our lives/ Up into a tranquil place/ that’s constantly denied/ Far from the crushing power/ which brought me to my knees/ Earthbound, justice stays/ always out of reach/ Disobey/ Defy/ Take your own time/ Fly”.

Somewhere in the middle sit “That We Have Been Here”, built on an almost atonal, midtempo electronic base, and the following “Longing Stilled”, with its radiant melody unfolding amid chamber strings, while the closing “I Of The Storm” brings the album to an unpredictable, stormy climax, with the band unleashing chaos and Anne screaming her lines at the top of her lungs.

Overall, The Law Is An Anagram Of Wealth proves to be a surprising record, able to update the classic Clark sound for a new decade, revealing fresh nuances, even if not always perfectly in focus.

After the success of the acoustic tour and her latest projects, Anne enters a more peaceful phase, moves to a cottage in the British countryside and welcomes visits from friends Martyn Bates, Paul Downing, Andy Bell and Chris Elliot, who help her write the songs for her new album, To Love And Be Loved (SPV, 1995), another blend of electronic backing and acoustic textures, in service of what she describes as her "most successful attempt to combine commercial and experimental ideas in a cohesive work". At its core is love, explored in its many forms: love for the world and for nature, to be cared for; broken love, which leaves behind nothing but tiny atoms of pain; the love of true friendship, perhaps the most important of all; erotic love; and healing love. A record steeped in romanticism and enriched by the usual, splendid writing of the English poet-songwriter.

The sounds draw on the most disparate genres: synth-pop, electro, rock, within an atmosphere that remains deeply evocative and intensely emotional. Clark's almost dreamlike spoken word reaches its sublime peak in the serene ode of “Mundesley Beach”, in the emotional tension of “Longing Harder Makes It Easier”, and amid the almost indie jaggedness of “The Healing”, with light jazz touches and an incisive pop melody. Anne's delivery grows ever more melancholy and subtle, like a shiver running through the mind, weighing each word and letting it float in the sonic space.

Elsewhere, the album becomes more direct, as in the nearly 13 minutes of the epic “Elegy For A Lost Summer”, which gradually builds, thickening melancholy and sensuality, with background choirs adding delicate touches that further enhance the poetic dimension of Clark, who once again proves able to fuse poetry and music with rare elegance.

Pastoral elegies

In the nineties, then, the English poet abandons her comfort zone, seeking new forms of expression and communication through the emotion of music and language, putting herself to the test as much as her audience. So too the pastoral interpretations of the texts by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke on Just After Sunset (1998), made alongside Martyn Bates, mark another disorienting turn in her path. Working mainly from the English translations by Anglo-German scholar J. B. Leishman and adapting the texts in an appropriate and respectful way, Clark sets Rilke's poems within a variety of musical frameworks, between folk and spare electronic textures. Thanks to Anne's distinctive poetic delivery and Martyn's intense vocals, the compositions offer an intimate and sensitive interpretation of one of the most significant poets in world literature.

Musically, there is an almost total retreat of synths, replaced by violin, piano, guitar, viola, cello and a range of other classical instruments, on which Anne Clark builds a deeply personal monument to Rilke's texts. Against the advance of modernity, the German poet set a metaphorical language rooted in nature and the Romantic tradition, which finds an effective and penetrating expression in the sparseness of the arrangements – just barely veiled by a light reverb. Against this dreamlike backdrop, Anne's clear voice develops an expressive power that strikes deep. Whether it's the pastoral flute of “Autumn”, the heartfelt duet of “From The Book Of Pilgrimage”, the almost messianic tone of “To Music” and “Going Blind”, or the more sinuous flow of “The Panther”, Clark manages to give the poems a convincing voice, also nodding to the decadent neofolk imagery of groups like Current 93, Death In June or Sol Invictus.

A rather daring experiment, in any case, one that would also be reissued four years later, in 2002. "It was the most difficult project I've ever made," she would explain on that occasion, "it was impossible to get any kind of support. Both the record industry and my publisher didn't want to know, because it's not a commercial project. For four years I've been working to make my Rilke songs known, and to bring them to the stage as well. Now I've got the rights to the material back, I've reissued the album and added two live videos as bonus material. The real reason for the reissue was to make the songs accessible to a wider audience, after the first release came out in such a limited way."

After a break devoted to returning to her studies, Clark comes back onto the music scene in 2001, and two years later adds another album to her acoustic series: From The Heart – Live In Bratislava, recorded together with Murat Parlak (vocals and piano), Jann Michael Engel (cello), Niko Lai (drums and percussion) and Jeff Aug (guitars) in the Slovak capital.

She also allows the Belgian electronic group Implant to remix some of her songs, giving rise to a collaboration that culminated in the album "Self-Inflicted" (2005), on which she performs two of her own tracks. It's a partnership further cemented by the English poet's involvement in two other works by the Belgian duo, the EPs "Too Many Puppies" and “Fade Away” (on which she duets with Claus Larsen of Leæther Strip), and on the subsequent album "Audioblender".

Back to the beat

In 2008, after recording numerous live albums, remix projects and interpretations of other authors' work, Clark released her first album of brand new original songs in over a decade.

Recorded in Germany with programmer Manuel G. Richter, aka Xabec, as co-producer, and dedicated to her late mother, Cecilia Ann Picton-Clark, The Smallest Acts Of Kindness (2008) also marks a partial return to electronic sounds. It's genuinely moving to hear Anne's solemn voice once again reciting her catalogue of unspeakable ills over the pulsing synth magma of "Nothing Going On", almost staking her claim as the originator of a style that has since spurred on sonic explorers of every kind, from Warp Records to UNKLE, from Björk (there was already an “Alarm Call” on Pressure Point, twelve years before the one on “Homogenic“) to Massive Attack. And it's precisely the Bristol pioneers that come to mind when faced with the dark, anguished beats in the style of "Mezzanine" over which Anne weaves the minimalist prose of this miraculous overture: apathetic, almost lifeless, forever hovering between singing and spoken word. "Nothing Going On": a statement of disillusionment, as intimate as it is political. But the deep humanity that has always run through Clark's lyrics already shines through in the following, poignant "The Hardest Heart", almost a final cry of hope, punctuated by a gorgeous acoustic arrangement for piano and strings: “Let the morning sun proclaim/ The light of the world/ Let the golden day unfurl/ On every wave, on every hill…/ The soul of the world/ Ignite a brand new day/ Let the morning sun proclaim/ A brand new start”.

Love and the complexity of human relationships, the madness of a world marching ever faster towards the abyss and chaos (the apocalyptic “If”), society and religion (the touching “Psalm”) remain at the heart of Anne Clark's poetics in the 2000s, expressed in prose or verse, somewhere between poetry and philosophical reflection. The intensity of her delivery, more nuanced and relaxed than in the past, is tinged with bitterness, with an angry sense of helplessness in the face of a world in ruins that she nevertheless continues to believe in. And her sound also returns to its roots in the synth-pop of her beginnings, as in the lovely single “Full Moon”, driving and subtly melancholic at the same time.

If in her previous work the lyrics never overpowered the music, now the two dimensions merge with greater harmony, sometimes leaving it to the orchestration to define the setting in which the words move: metaphysical folk with atmospheric piano and string arrangements ("Know"), electro-acoustic jazz ("Boy Racing"), acid-tinged synthetic funk (the instrumental "Zest!"), unfathomable techno ("If"), industrial with near-metal riffs ("Prayer Before Birth"), subterranean ambient probing depths already explored in the Nineties by Labradford or The Third Eye Foundation, or more airborne, in the manner of Brian Eno, as on "As Soon As I Get Home", a solemn, intense lament on which pianist Murat Parlak's deep voice conjures up a possible meeting between Anne Clark and David Sylvian. Among the names involved are also Xabec, Rainer Von Vielen and her Belgian cohorts in Implant, sometimes at her side live. The result is a surprising album, more melodic and accessible than one might have expected, yet still as radical as her work from the Eighties: The Smallest Acts Of Kindness is a full-blooded comeback.

Two years later, Anne Clark released the first chapter of a dynamic, ever-evolving project, "Past & Future Tense" (2010), the first release on her own label, After Hours Productions. Rather than putting out yet another compilation from her catalogue, she decided to invite young musicians, producers and DJs to work on tracks – including lesser-known ones – from her repertoire, not just to remix them but to completely reinterpret them. The result is a fresh, stimulating and contemporary vision, offered by a new generation on an artist who had, in turn, influenced their path and their approach to electronic music. As hip-hop became a dominant force on charts worldwide, the spoken-word pioneer would recall: "When I played in the United States, I was amazed by the number of Black people in the audience. Mostly kids who were into rap and hip-hop".

In January 2011, Clark, working with longtime pianist and co-composer Murat Parlak, contributed an arrangement of Charles Baudelaire's poem "Enivrez-Vous" ("Be Drunk") to the audiobook and radio drama "Die Künstliche Paradiese" (Hörbuch Hamburg/Radio Bremen), produced by Kai Grehn. The project was later developed into a live form with a performance at the Volksbühne in Berlin in October 2011.

"Die Künstliche Paradiese" won the Deutscher Hörbuch Preis 2012, and following this success, Anne and Murat were invited once again, this time to create arrangements for twelve poems by Emily Brontë for the audiobook and radio drama "Sturmhöhe" ("Wuthering Heights"), which would go on to make the Longlist of the German Audio Book Prize 2014 (best radio drama).

Clark then embarked on an extensive acoustic tour with longtime collaborators Murat Parlak and Jann Michael Engel, under the title Enough (2012), also documented on a new live album. As the name suggests, the project strips everything down to the essentials: words, voice, piano and cello. A path of focus and subtraction, accompanied by an image from Anastasia Tyutikova. "Deeply immersed, like everyone, in the mud of excess and overload, we simply invite the audience to sit down and... be... be with us, be with the music, the poetry, perhaps with a special guest. To share a conversation, a few laughs, but above all we ask the audience to be with themselves. This is 'Enough'", she remarks in her own inimitable way. In another interview, she reveals: "I'd love to collaborate with Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois or David Bowie, that would be interesting". And she jokes about being perhaps the only singer to have released records for so long without ever really singing: "It's true. I'm not a great singer. Sometimes I sing to myself, but I don't really feel comfortable doing it".

Big in Germany

Alongside her work with her band, in early 2013 Anne launched a new project in collaboration with German musician and producer herrB, returning to her electronic roots with the three-track EP Fairytales From The Underground, highlighted by the driving dance number "Darkest Hour", followed a year later by Life Wires (2014), a five-track EP that received an even warmer reception thanks to a successful blend of grainy EBM ("The Winter Clock"), darkwave echoes (the austere "Meine Fremde Seele"), driving synth-pop beats ("Whisper Of Shells", "Form") and evocative atmospheric textures ("A Dream"), all in service of her unmistakable spoken word.

In 2015 she also took part in the Gothic Meets Klassik event at a sold-out Gewandhaus in Leipzig, performing orchestral arrangements of some of her best-known songs together with the Philharmonie of Zielona Góra, while 2016 saw her back on tour across Europe with herrB. The sardonic parody "Donald Trump Praesidend (Quack Quack)" (2017), made with artist Ludwig London following the tycoon's election, confirmed her unchanged wit and political edge.

In 2018 she collaborated with German musician and composer Thomas Rückoldt on the album Homage (The Silence Inside). A tribute, indeed, dedicated to the authors of some of Anne's best-loved poems. Spare electronics, atmospheric piano and her unmistakable recitation of texts by Alice Oswald, Les Murray, W.B. Yeats and R.M. Rilke, among others, give life to a work of intense intimacy, centred on the power of words.

Germany, by now her long-standing "second home", also dedicated a documentary to her, "Anne Clark – I'll Walk Out Into Tomorrow" (2018), the result of thorough biographical research by German director Claus Withopf. The film traces episodes relating to the unexpected boom of her success, the context of a London rich in do-it-yourself movements, her stormy relationship with her family, and her conception of poetry and sexuality. Each chapter is introduced by a song tied to the theme in question and by a depiction of the lyrics that make it up. A work that offers a curious and fresh perspective on the English artist's journey.

In 2019 Anne extended her collaboration with Thomas Rückoldt with a direct and passionate response to the Brexit vote on the single "Stop Brexit", where the slogans of protesters opposed to leaving the EU merge with Anne's dry delivery and pounding techno pulses, offering further proof of her ever-sharp political vision. In October of the same year she took part once again in Gothic Meets Klassik at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, this time with the Leipziger Philharmonie conducted by Michael Köhler.

The fight against illness

2020 looked set to be a year of celebrations. After more than forty years of activity as a writer, author and performer, and coinciding with her sixtieth birthday, Anne began preparing a major tour with longtime collaborators such as Jeff Aug, Murat Parlak and Jann Michael Engel, joined by new members including Job Verweijen and Justin Ciuche. Writing and rehearsals were already underway when, unfortunately, a double blow struck: the Coronavirus pandemic and an ovarian cancer diagnosis. "I felt like I was drowning in words: alongside the Covid-19 pandemic, cancer completely changed my life," Clark would confide in a moving interview, "As a person, as an artist, I feel weaker, physically and emotionally. But I hold on to my spirit all the more fiercely".

The impact of these traumatic events forced Anne to seek new ways of connecting with her audience. Traditional concerts and recordings were no longer possible. So, further developing the concept behind "Past & Future Tense", the English artist released a new album of reworkings of her repertoire, "Synaesthesia" (2021). Lockdown, after all, while halting live events, did not stop music from circulating: the album features a diverse range of interpretations by both longtime collaborators (herrB and Thomas Rückoldt) and leading figures of the contemporary electronic scene such as Solomun, Blank & Jones, Andreas Brecht and Yagya, highlighting Clark's deep and far-reaching influence across multiple generations.

After a particularly difficult year of treatment, Anne resumed writing with members of her band. At the end of 2021, together with her friend and violinist Justin Ciuche, she created an inspired, improvisational project with cellist Ulla Van Daelen at the Stockfisch studios, produced by Günther Pauler. The result is Borderland – Found Music For A Lost World (2022), an intimate, poignant collection of material written during her illness and recovery, alongside interpretations of poems by W.B. Yeats and Mary Coleridge.

That same year saw the release of “Mriya An Ode To Ukraine”, in which the English artist renews her political vocation with a moving act of protest against the suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian people by Vladimir Putin and his despotic regime. “In the summer of 2019 I had the pleasure of working with director Jurko Marrow in Kyiv,” Clark explains. “Now it's an honour for me to collaborate with him again on a new project, with music by Justin Ciuche and Jann Michael Engel. I wrote the lyrics in English, and Jurko not only translated the poem in full into Ukrainian but also recorded a vocal take. By combining our two voices with strings and ambient sounds from this unsettled landscape, the song was born.”

In 2022 Anne Clark finally returns to her favourite pursuit: touring and live performance. Her tremendous strength of character once again drives her into the arms of her beloved audience, even as she admits: "Psychologically, I'm still working through the trauma of cancer and I face constant anxiety about its possible return. I'm told to move on and live my life, and I try to do so every day, intensely." All that's left for us to do is thank her for this and for a brilliant career that has crossed genre boundaries and paved the way for a whole range of sonic hybrids, from new wave – and Neue Deutsche Welle – to coldwave, EBM, hip-hop, industrial and even modern classical. Listening today to the proud, cutting verses of Kae Tempest, one's thoughts can't help but return to that young, angry poet from Croydon who, behind that 80s fringe and sullen gaze, concealed a boundless lyrical and musical universe that remains fertile to this day.

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