| Nicola Hitchcock | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Nicola Hitchcock |
| Born | Paddington, United Kingdom |
| Origin | London |
| Genres | Trip hop Chillout Downtempo |
| Occupations | singer, songwriter, record producer |
| Instruments | Voice, guitar, keyboards, accordion, hand drum, percussion programming |
| Years active | 1993 – present |
| Labels | F-Beat Records Tempted Records |
| Website | www.nicolahitchcock.com |
Nicola Hitchcock (born in Paddington, London, UK) is a British singer and songwriter. She is best known for having been the singer of the band Mandalay (a critically acclaimed trip hop duet from the United Kingdom). Following the demise of Mandalay, she has worked with various dance music and avant-garde musicians.
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Nicola Hitchcock's father was a musician and actor turned TV producer/director, while her mother was a former actress - they divorced when Nicola was three. She has credited her father for her initial interest in music and for teaching her how to create her first songs. She began seriously writing songs from the age of nine, when she received her first acoustic guitar. Early influences included The Beatles and Carole King.[1]
""He was a music addict, always had commercial radio playing in the car and in the house… he’d sit beside me at the piano making up duets, him at the bass end me at the top … I remember our living room being scattered with test pressings, white labels... putting them on and jumping around to them as a kid, feeling very privileged, it all felt very exciting to me..."
From the age of 15, she began gaining stage experience in local covers bands, learning to play accordion, keyboards and percussion in addition to her vocal and guitar skills. While training as a teacher (a career which she was ultimately unsuited for) Hitchcock took the opportunity to learn from degree music students, gaining lessons on classical composition and opera singing as well as keyboard skills.[3]
During her twenties, Hitchcock gained work as a backing vocalist (and occasional instrumentalist) on the London live music circuit. Still lacking in confidence, she took a self-development course which gave her the courage to approach a band with an existing record deal who'd advertised for members in Melody Maker, and to gain a place with them playing keyboards and singing backing vocals. The band recorded one album and split up, although Hitchcock continued working with their bass player for another three years. Following this, she wrote and recorded several 4-track demos of her own (using keyboard, acoustic guitar and drum machine) and marked time by performing solo as a voice-and-guitar act in various acoustic and folk clubs in London.[4][5]
One of the record companies to which Hitchcock had sent tapes was F-Beat Records, who signed her up for her first solo album, 1993's A Bowl Of Chalk. In contrast to her later work with Mandalay and others, A Bowl Of Chalk was a low-key and mostly acoustic affair with a strong folk music influence. Hitchcock added folk instrumentation such as whistle, accordion and hand drum, and several tracks featured the celebrated British jazz/folk musician Danny Thompson (ex-Pentangle/John Martyn) on double bass. (Other performers included Prefab Sprout drummer Neil Conti). In a Folk Roots magazine review, Colin Irwin praised Hitchcock's songwriting, commenting "there’s something indefinably magical in her delivery and in the very human troubled personal conflicts in her exceptional lyrics... a remarkable debut."[6]
A Bowl Of Chalk boosted Hitchcock's reputation on London’s folk and acoustic circuit and led to full band performances at the Guildford Folk Festival, the Cambridge Folk Festival and the Phoenix Festival. Unfortunately, F-Beat Records folded shortly afterwards and the album went out of print.[7]
Recently inspired by the developing trip-hop music scene (as spearheaded by Massive Attack and Portishead), Hitchcock now began to seek out other musical opportunities. Replying to another advert in Melody Maker put her in touch with Chrysalis Music and with Saul Freeman. Freeman was a multi-instrumentalist/producer who had initially been the other half of the acclaimed pop duo Thieves, before a falling-out with his partner (singer David McAlmont) had left Freeman without a band and with his work released as McAlmont's debut album.
Hitchcock and Freeman formed another pop duo, Mandalay, which blended Hitchcock's interest in singer-songwriter material and psychological/psychotherapeutic concepts with Freeman's textured arrangements and his mixture of trip-hop dance smoothness and post-punk avant-garde textures. Mandalay were courted by various major labels on completion of their first demos, but opted instead to sign to David Steele’s independent label Organic Records. Mandalay’s first single release, "Flowers Bloom" gained the Single of the Week award in Melody Maker, immediately strengthening their position. They subsequently signed to V2 Records, for whom they would release two albums, Empathy and Instinct.
Mandalay lasted for seven years, during which they received a good deal of critical acclaim and the tag of "Madonna's favourite band." The project ended in 2002 due to musical and personal differences. Hitchcock has hinted that one of the reasons may have been frustration at Freeman's degree of control over instrumentation, arrangement and production.[8]
After Mandalay's demise in 2002, Hitchcock's songwriting and vocal talents were sought out by Tiësto who chose her song "In My Memory" for his first album, In My Memory. With a deft remix from him, it became the lead single for the album, the success of which led to a live performance by Hitchcock at the Dutch Music Awards in 2002.
Hitchcock's career was interrupted by a car accident, a relocation to Devon and a period spent recuperating from the Epstein-Barr virus. However, during this time she continued to be sought out by artists, musicians, and DJs contacting her via the internet and email with requests for possible collaborations. She began working on tracks from avant garde composers Hector Zazou, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Lenny Ibizarre and the underground artist & DJ Chris Brann (Wamdue Project, T'paah etc.).[9][10]
In 2005 Hitchcock released her second solo album Passive Aggressive, on her own label Tempted Records. The album compiled many of her recent collaborations - excluding "In My Memory" but including the work with Sakamoto, Brann, Ibizarre and Zazou (as well as newer work with Sounds from the Ground, the string trio Echo and frequent Thieves/Mandalay collaborator Michael J. Ade).
In 2006, Hitchcock was approached by Justin Elswick of the electronic dance project Sleepthief, which led to her co-writing and performing the song "You Did A Good Thing" on Sleepthief's debut album The Dawnseeker.
Hitchcock is currently working on her next solo record.