[5] 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.

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.

They turned it down and in August formed Flying Mango Attack with bassist Lee Citron and drummer Shïan Smith-Pancorvo (both formerly of Stony Sleep) and recorded the album Karmageddon.

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).

The driver swerved to avoid a stopped car, crashed into a truck parked on the shoulder, and Birkin, Citron, and Mangili were killed instantly.

"[12] The poet Robert Anthony Welch (Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ulster) wrote, "Anno Birkin's book is utterly devastating.

[16][17] With the profits of Birkin's words and music, his parents initiated Anno's Africa, an alternative arts-based charity for Kenyan orphans and slum children, with the aim of giving them a chance to express themselves creatively.

His mother Bee Gilbert ran a pilot programme in the spring of 2007, to teach art, music, dance, drama, film, and acrobatics.

The Telegraph Magazine published a five-page account of the pilot in September 2007,[18] and an exhibition of the children's art work was held in London which featured over 200 paintings and monoprints.

The event was hosted by Joanna Lumley and Ian Holm, and helped raise funds for the next project which was carried out in South Africa during March and April 2008.

The Anno's Africa team returned to Kenya every year since then to carry out further arts workshops, which were the subject of a CNN special feature on 11 April 2011.