Pet Shop Boys detail Alan Turing album ‘A Man From The Future’
Pet Shop Boys will release “A Man From The Future”, an eight-part work on Alan Turing made with biographer Andrew Hodges, on 9 October via Parlophone.
Photo: Britta Tabrit
Pet Shop Boys will release “A Man From The Future”, an eight-part work about British mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing, on 9 October 2026 via Parlophone Records. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe created the piece with Turing biographer Professor Andrew Hodges, and it can be pre-ordered now in several formats.
The composition was first performed at the BBC Proms in July 2014 at London’s Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC Singers and narration by actor Juliet Stevenson. For this new recording, both the text and the music have been revised and rearranged. Pet Shop Boys produced the album together with composer Sven Helbig, who also arranged the strings and vocals. The recording, made in the UK and Germany over the past year, features the Manchester Camerata Octet on strings and the Manchester Grammar School Choir, with Stevenson again narrating.
The album is structured in eight parts following episodes in Turing’s life and work: “Natural wonders every child should know”, “He dreamed of machines”, “The Enigma”, “Other ranks”, “The memory and the control”, “The trial”, “Only in his death” and “A man from the future”. It will be released on vinyl, as a 2CD set and on Blu-ray audio, with the Blu-ray edition carrying the full sung-and-narrated version, an instrumental version and a version without narration in Dolby Atmos and 96kHz/24-bit stereo.
Ahead of the release, BBC Radio 6 Music gives the new recording its broadcast on Sunday 4 October within Stuart Maconie’s “Freak Zone” (8-10pm), where Maconie also talks to Tennant, Lowe and Hodges about the reworking. The piece airs again that night on BBC Radio 3’s “Unclassified” (11.30pm-12.30am), with Tennant, Lowe and Hodges joining presenter Elizabeth Alker. Both broadcasts stay on BBC Sounds for 30 days. On 8 October, Tennant, Lowe and Hodges appear at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester for a listening and conversation event built around a full playback of the album.
About Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys formed in London in 1981, when Neil Tennant, then a journalist at Smash Hits, met keyboardist Chris Lowe in a Chelsea electronics shop. The duo built up material through the early 1980s, first from Tennant’s flat and later in a small Camden Town studio, developing songs that became “West End Girls”, “It’s a Sin” and “Rent”. “West End Girls” reached number one in the UK and US in 1986, launching a run of albums – “Please” (1986), “Actually” (1987), “Introspective” (1988), “Behaviour” (1990) and beyond – built on Tennant’s deadpan vocals, Lowe’s electronic productions and lyrics that mixed pop hooks with social observation.
Across four decades, Pet Shop Boys have continued to release studio albums, tour internationally and score stage and film work, including “Battleship Potemkin” and the musical “Closer to Heaven”. They are currently on their “Dreamworld” tour, for which Side-Line previously covered the announcement of the German support acts. “A Man From The Future” marks the duo’s first dedicated concept work built around a single historical figure, revisiting a piece they first performed with Andrew Hodges in 2014 and now releasing as a studio album on Parlophone.
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For almost 15 years I’ve been writing about music, interviewing artists and reviewing releases for Peek-A-Boo Magazine. Recently, I also launched my own WordPress website, where I continue to share interviews, reviews and news from the underground scene. The darker side of music has been part of my life for more than 30 years, with a passion for everything from ’80s synthpop and New Wave to EBM, Futurepop and dark electronic music in general. Also Metal and Rock is part of my world. Away from the scene, I work in a public library, where books are part of my everyday life. I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction, especially books on politics, religion, health and travel. I’m also a fan of thrillers and horror films. When I’m not listening to music or reading, you’ll usually find me exploring nature, enjoying a good sauna, experimenting with vegan cooking, or travelling to my second home, Finland. I’ve always believed the underground has the best stories. My job is simply to help tell them
