FFO: Cult TV, Novelty Bands, British Pop and Rock 23rd of November 1963 - the debut of a British television icon. 24th of November 2017 - the release of a conceptual musical tribute to that icon. 54 years and one day... the 55th year of Doctor Who. Inspired by the inspired work of The Duckworth Lewis Method (and various other artists down the years, such as Vivian Stanshall, The Human League and Pink Floyd), Klaus Joynson thought about creating a similarly unique concept album. Cricket was taken. As were Science Fiction, Sorrow and Bells that are Tubular. So naturally he turned to his biggest obsession: Doctor Who - the perfect touchstone to document the past 50-odd years of British music. So Klaus wrote and performed a Doctor Who concept album. 12 songs for 12 Doctors, each done in the British musical style of that Doctor's time. Except it somehow expanded to 14 - got to have the intro and the outro! (In fact, with four short companion pieces hidden in there, it's really 18) Representing 12 eras in just 12 songs presented challenges. Some choices were easy: Dawn of British Beat for the Black & White days of William Hartnell (Track 2: "Verity & Delia")... as the show embraced colour television and capes the Jon Pertwee period just had to be Glam Rock Glitterstompf (Track 4: "Five Rounds Rapid")... with his then companions dressed like Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley it was Electro-Pop for Peter Davison's tenure (Track 6: "Soap Opera")... and only Trip-Hop could soundtrack the existential angst of Paul McGann's iteration (Track 9: "Vancouver") Other periods were less obvious: Both Prog Rock *and* Punk Rock for the longest serving Doctor, Tom Baker (Track 5: "Walking In Eternity")... JAMC fuelled Indie-Noise for Scottish Sylvester McCoy (Track 8: "Masterplan")... and so on, through Psychedelia, Brit-Pop, Grime, Landfill Indie, NWOBHM... right up to the present day, with a song for Peter Capaldi inspired by two things he's done in the past (Track 13: The X-Rated "Drunk In Time") Dense, even for a concept album, New Adventures in Time and Space contains many nerdy musical and televisual references, philosophical conjunctions and basic dumb jokes. It will make you wonder where that musical reference is taken from, what episode of Doctor Who that's about... and why these fools spent so long making the thing in the first place - and you can dance to it. With the future now agreeably female, this could be seen as the culmination of an era. Twelve times the Doctor was a man, celebrated in 12+ songs. People who like to overthink things made this. We hope you like to overlisten.
