Cosmicity

Mark Nicholas treats Cosmicity as a one-man project rather than an ensemble. He studied at the University of Michigan School of Music during the early 1990s. Earlier musical involvements included several groups, among them the Top 40 act Backdoor, which employed four female backup vocalists. Nicholas later reduced the singers to two, renamed the outfit Acceleration, and shifted its direction closer to the new wave style he would pursue under Cosmicity. During college he and a classmate started My Friend Wendy as an electro-pop duo, yet conflicting creative ideas ended those intentions at once. Nicholas therefore launched a solo career under the name Cosmicity. Although he first hoped to build a band around the project, he located no one who matched his concept. Four cassettes appeared in 1992 and reached only friends and supporters. The Vision, a complete album, arrived on CD in 1994. Cosmicity now stands among the best-recognized acts in the synth pop revival together with Ganymede, Color Theory, and Faith Assembly. In 2001 the project contributed a cover of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “Bloc Bloc Bloc” to the tribute collection Messages: A Tribute to OMD.