NEWS: The Shapes Between Us Turn Into Animals

When he first heard Bob Dylan at English boarding school at the age of 13 his life changed. "I had wanted to become a time traveler," he says, "and then I heard Dylan and decided to become a folk singer. It was a more realistic goal." Like many boys, Hitchcock was a fan of science fiction, and while he says he doesn't read that much of it any more, he admits that his love of sci-fi's "visual element" is fully evident in his songs.

"To me a song should paint a little picture," he says. "I remember vividly an H.G. Wells story about these transparent monsters who come out of the water and feed on Victorians. And J.G. Ballard's 'The Garden of Time,' with these aristocrats living on a hill and a mob slowly advancing toward them. The aristocrats halt time by breaking off flowers -- the aroma of the flowers stops time for a while, but the mob keeps advancing and the garden gets smaller. By the time the mob reaches the palace the count and his wife are just statues. Those stories affected me enormously. People like Bob Dylan were good at that as well. He's a very pictorial songwriter. You can see the world through his songs, which are full of images that are blended and edited together, like a kaleidoscope."

"You know radio-controlled aircraft? To me, singing is a bit like that. Sort of make your voice take off and do loop-the-loops and fly around different corners of the sky and then make it land without crashing. I've got a good remote control voice now."