Anne Clark - The Sitting Room

Always more of a reciter (albeit a powerful one) rather than a singer, Anne Clark delivered her debut masterpiece with The Sitting Room EP, a work of fluid synthscapes that effervesced like the formations of a lava lamp (Oh My!). "The Sitting Room" set the tone, which in just over two minutes managed to bridge the kosmische wanderlust, symphonic romanticism and new-wave futurism. Further triumphs were encountered in the tormented musique-concrète of "Swimming", the dreamy ambientorama "An Ordinary Life", the transparent requiem "Shades", the fragile synth-folk ("Short Story"), and the electronic dirge "All We Have To Be Thankful For". The very short duration of these tracks only makes their quality more impressive. [Whoever wrote this must have been eating a dictionary for breakfast. The album is OKAY; it is neither awesome nor rubbish. Sometimes it is better that we sit here in silence and just absorb.]

Ripped to MP3 @ 320 kbps

For more than 4 decades, Anne Clark has held an unrivalled place in contemporary electronic music. A poet with the most punk of origins, who has pioneered the use of spoken word to electronic soundtracks since breaking through in the early 1980s. She has enjoyed a remarkable creative career to date, having recorded 12 albums alongside notable singles and collaborations with the likes of David Harrow, Vini Reilly, John Foxx and Martyn Bates.
Following in the trail of the bright yet shortly lived explosion of 70’s Punk culture, she found her voice among the angst ridden fervour and openly experimental New Wave scene that emerged shortly after. An uncontested champion of spoken word, she has never sung a note; always placing her words to music in a gloomy, prophetic fashion that conjures an atmosphere that has been aptly dubbed “World Pain”. Many of her lyrics deal critically with the imperfections of humanity, everyday life and politics, which has won her many friends and fans across the board of techno-pop.
Born in South London in 1960 to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, she left school at sixteen having really “fit in” with the constraints of the education system. It in no way restricted her voracious appetite for learning, music, reading and the need to be involved with the world around her. Before becoming a musician, she worked multiple jobs including a care assistant role in a psychiatric hospital. It was however her job at Bonaparte Records, a local independent record store and label that opened her eyes and ears to the scene that was just about to explode into life in London. Along with so many people at the time, punk led the way to a whole new approach for dealing with music, arts and society itself.
Combining socially engaged texts with innovative music, she has covered every kind of style, while maintaining her own identity on every recording. In what has been a fruitful career, she’s covered a wide range of sounds without ever deviating from her astounding ability and meter.

A1 The Sitting Room 2:22
A2 Swimming 1:39
A3 An Ordinary Life 2:34
A4 Shades 2:00
B1 Short Story (Party Mix!) 1:53
B2 The Power Game 0:46
B3 All We Have To Be Thankful For 4:16