Nicola Hitchcock
| Nicola Hitchcock | |
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| Born | London, England |
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| Years active | 1984 –present |
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| Website | www.nicolahitchcock.com |
Nicola Hitchcock is a British singer and songwriter. She is best known for having been one half of the trip hop duo Mandalay (along with Saul Freeman). Following the demise of Mandalay, she has worked with various dance music and avant-garde musicians including Chris Brann and Ryuichi Sakamoto but has more recently returned to her solo career.
Nicola Hitchcock's father was a musician, actor and script writer, TV producer/director – her parents divorced, her father leaving the family home 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.
""My Dad 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"
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 Hitchcock took the opportunity to learn from degree music students, gaining lessons on classical composition and opera singing as well as keyboard skills.
During her twenties, Hitchcock gained work as a backing vocalist and multi-instrumentalist on the London live music circuit. She was for a time a member of Eternal Triangle, a London-based pop/new wave band who were signed to Beggars Banquet. In 1984 she contributed vocals and keyboards to their sole album, Touch and Let Go, as well as its two associated singles. She later provided vocals for Shen's Spirit of the Sea (1993), an "ambient/chillout concept album of sorts."
In 1992 she wrote and recorded several 4-track demos performed solo as a voice-and-guitar act in various acoustic and folk clubs prior to being signed up by F-Beat/Demon Records.
F-Beat Records signed her up for her first solo album, 1993's A Bowl of Chalk. A Bowl of Chalk was a low-key, stripped-down, acoustic vibe. 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." The album yielded two singles, Pick Up Your Coat and My Mistake. The former featured an acoustic cover of Squeeze's Is That Love, performed as a duet with Chris Difford.
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