Film music composer & sound designer

Background

Introduced to the guitar by his father, Thomas Nicol trained at the conservatory in composition, electroacoustic music and sound design, in the class of Diego Losa, composer at the GRM / Radio France. From that double culture — instrumental writing on one side, musique concrète and the studio on the other — comes a way of working in which the border between music and sound is deliberately porous.

That led him to experiments such as the score for In Utero, part of which was recorded underwater.

Musical style

Sustained strings, grainy textures, repeating figures, electronic beds: his writing always looks for a particular colour, a material the film can settle into.

The creative gesture often starts from acoustic instruments, and their sensitivity. Clarinets, violins, cellos, double basses, mandolins…: every score is written for performers, then recorded with them — at times up to symphony orchestra, as in Budapest in 2025. A multi-instrumentalist, Thomas plays the guitar and bass parts himself, even cello effects, and keeps his own collection of more unusual instruments — lyre-harp, kalimba, small percussion.

The other side of his work is documentary: capturing real sounds — the rattle of a soldier's pack, the mechanism of a mine, water — and drawing them into the music until it is no longer clear where one ends and the other begins. Some recordings called for special setups, such as a percussionist recorded underwater, at the bottom of a swimming pool, with underwater microphones.

Thomas also looks for his sounds in the studio, at the editing stage, as an heir to tape technique: slowing down, looping, saturation, feedback. Those manipulations now extend into tools he builds himself — effect plugins or controllers — to reach ever more particular sounds.

Film and video games

Thomas Nicol has written regularly for documentary film, including three films for Arte directed by Stéphane Ghez: Xenakis Révolution (2022), Zao Wou-Ki, peintre sans limites and Victor Horta, architecte d'un rêve européen (2026). Alongside these, one-off documentaries for France 5, RMC Découverte and regional television.

In fiction, L'Ambassadeur (dir. Bertrand Chanal, 2026) was recorded with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra. Some twenty short films shot in France, Sweden, Quebec, Egypt and Peru came before it, several of them honoured at festivals, such as Best Music at the Sveriges Kortfilmfestival for the short film Une amourette.

Thomas has worked on several video games as composer and sound designer, from Post Human W.A.R to the Château de Castelnaud, through to Dog in the Machine, released on 29 September 2026, whose interactive score and sound design were the object of meticulous work, including musical systems that can be heard through an interactive player. Thomas lent his singing voice to the game Mr. Record, from Glee-Cheese Studio, to music written by Charles Bardin and Valentin Ducloux — release planned for 2027.

In advertising, he created the music for the global campaign ASUS — In Search of Incredible (2024) as well as for the AVEENO Skin Relief brand (2027).

Finally, museography: sound design for visitor journeys and installations in museums and memorial sites — the Musée Guerre et Paix en Ardennes, the Historial du Paysan Soldat, the Saint-Étienne Mining Museum, the Château de Castelnaud.

Awards & selections

Best Music award at the Sveriges Kortfilmfestival 2015 for Une amourette. Nominee in the European Talent Competition at SoundTrack_Cologne 2018. Selected for Canneseries 2019 (InDevelopment programme) and for the Festival International du Film d'Aubagne 2016 masterclass led by Bruno Coulais and Gilles Alonzo.