Anno Birkin
This article has an unclear citation style. (July 2016) |
Anno Birkin | |
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Born | Alexander Kingdom Nik-o Birkin 9 December 1980 London, England |
Died | 8 November 2001 Milan, Italy | (aged 20)
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Alexander Kingdom Nik-o "Anno" Birkin (9 December 1980 – 8 November 2001) was an English poet and musician. He received critical acclaim before he and his bandmates Alberto Mangili and Lee Citron were killed in a car accident. The charity Anno's Africa was founded in his name.
Relations
He was born to Andrew Birkin and Bee Gilbert. He had one brother Ned Birkin, three paternal half-siblings (one of whom is David Birkin) and two maternal half-siblings (Melissa Holm and Barnaby Holm). His paternal aunt is Jane Birkin, and his cousins are Kate Barry, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon. His grandparents on his father's side were Judy Campbell and Lt Cdr David Leslie Birkin, grandson of the lace manufacturer and railway director Sir Thomas Birkin, 1st Baronet.[1][2][3][4]
Childhood
Birkin named himself Anno when he was three, after his favourite book, Anno's Journey by
Music
Birkin's first band, called Midstream, formed in 1994 with his school-friends Billy Scherer and JS Rafaeli, gigged in London until 1996 when it split up. Durango 95 was put together that same year, but split up in 1997. For the next two years, Birkin composed and played on his own as well as working with Scherer.
While visiting his father on the film set of The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc in 1998, Birkin fell in love with the actress Milla Jovovich. Anno and Milla wrote and recorded a number of songs together.[citation needed]
During the summer of 1999, Birkin wrote and recorded a number of songs, both solo and with Scherer; the two wrote Ultraviolence together, that led to a recording offer from
In September 2000, Birkin, Scherer, and Citron met the Italian drummer Alberto Mangili and formed Kicks joy Darkness ("KjD", named after a quote from Jack Kerouac's On the Road).[6] KjD began performing in late 2000 and in December, recorded an EP Ark, produced in Birkin's Welsh studio. The following spring, he travelled around India with his brother David Birkin, writing poetry and songs. He returned to England in April and embarked on a series of gigs with KjD, quickly building up a keen following on the London circuit.[7]
The band decided to record Method One, their first studio album, in Bergamo, where Mangili had a recording studio. They played their farewell gig at the Dublin Castle in London before heading to Italy at the end of August. Birkin wrote to his fiancée Honeysuckle Weeks, "Everything has fallen into place around my skull thanks to this opportunity [of recording in Italy]. For the first time in my life I feel like I know what I'm doing, and I'm doing what I know. The fear and anxiety and excitement I'm feeling at the moment is bursting me."[8]
Death
On 8 November 2001, after the band had spent the day rehearsing, they were driving early in the morning in a thick fog on a motorway outside of Milan. The driver swerved to avoid a stopped car, crashed into a truck parked on the shoulder, and Birkin, Citron, and Mangili were killed instantly.[9][10] Birkin was a month and a day short of his 21st birthday.
Legacy
Birkin had created a website for the band in August 2001. Following his death, the site has provided a forum for his friends and fans. In 2003, Dreams of Waking – a 2-CD album of songs by Birkin and KjD – was released. Rock Sound called it an "art-rock adventure with hints of early Radiohead and Sonic Youth. … Anno's lyrics are poetic masterpieces in their own right."[11] Later that year, a selection of Birkin's poetry – Who Said the Race Is Over? – was published and sold over 4,000 copies. Tom Payne reviewed it in The Daily Telegraph as "this proud, fresh Romanticism. … Yet for all their brilliance, the poems feel unfinished. It is not just that the words have been left behind as a kind of consolation to those who mourn the author; it is as though they are still going about their tasks, asking the same questions and insolently refusing to settle."[12]
The poet
Birkin was one of the two subjects of a BBC Radio 4 documentary, The Lost Boys, broadcast in September 2006.[15]
Rachel Davies of Esben and the Witch has cited Birkin's poetry as an influence on her own lyrics.[16][17]
Anno's Africa
With the profits of Birkin's words and music, his parents initiated Anno's Africa, an alternative arts-based charity for
Notes
- ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 321
- ^ "Sophie Hunter Superstar". Spiegel.
- ^ "Les Heures Ou Je M'Eclipse". Record of the Day.
- ^ "Guy & Sophie Hunter Chambers: Isis Project". WowHD. Archived from the original on 26 June 2015.
- ^ "The Lost Boy'?". The Times Magazine. 12 April 2003.
- ^ "At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver coloured section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night."
- ^ Jessamy Calkin (May 2003). "The Boy Who Never Grew Old". The Daily Telegraph Magazine.
- ^ Birkin, Anno. (30 August 2001). Letter to Honeysuckle Weeks.
- ^ "What We're Loving: Dune, Anno, Common Prayer". The Paris Review. 9 November 2012. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
- ^ Weeks, Honeysuckle (10 July 2018). "Who was Anno Birkin (1980-2001)?". Honeysuckle Weeks Repository. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
- ^ Victoria Durham, Rock Sound, August 2003
- ^ Tom Payne, The Daily Telegraph, 21 February 2004
- ^ Prof. Robert Welsh, Review Page, www.kicksjoydarkness.co.uk, 21 July 2006
- ^ Another Magazine, Winter 2005
- ^ The Lost Boys, BBC Radio 4, 13 September 2006
- ^ "Rachel from Esben and the Witch: The Importance of Words". Drowned in Sound. 2011. Archived from the original on 5 February 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
- ^ "The 405 – Interview: Esben and the Witch". thefourohfive. 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
- ^ Reaching for the Stars, The Daily Telegraph Magazine, 15 September 2007.
- ^ "Beautiful dance in tough neighborhood". CNN. 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
References
- Breaking into Heaven – ID Magazine, November 2001
- Dreams of Waking – Rock Sound, August 2003
- "For I Am Youth!" – The Daily Telegraph, 21 February 2004
- Who Said the Race Is Over? – Another Magazine, Spring 2005
- Reaching for the Stars – The Daily Telegraph Magazine, 15 September 2007
- Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vogue (Paris edition), December 2007/January 2008
- Who Said the Race Was Over? – Ultraviolet Magazine, April 2008