Last night’s concert with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra was a wonderful experience for us. The orchestra played with such luxurious power and conviction, conducted by Dominic Wheeler, and the Manchester Chamber Choir brought ethereal beauty to, for instance, “Miracles” and “He dreamed of machines” (from our new piece about Alan Turing). To hear Johnny Marr playing the guitar riff from “This must be the place I waited years to leave” was a real thrill so many years after he played on the original record; his acoustic guitar playing on “Breathing space” was gorgeous. Other highlights for me were performing live for the first time “It couldn’t happen here”, “The survivors” and “For all of us”. Sven Helbig’s orchestral arrangements were both magnificent and subtle: “New York City boy” was returned to Broadway; “He dreamed of machines” had a pale beauty. Many thanks to everyone at the BBC, Parlophone and our management and tour personnel for making it happen, to Pete Gleadall for programming and to Jo Whiley for introducing it. The concert can be heard on BBC Radio 2 tonight at 8 pm. I hope you enjoy it. Neil x (Photograph by Kate Southall/BBC.)
We have additional information about the making of the “A man from the future” album.
Recent Pet Texts
Pet Shop Boys and Andrew Hodges’ listening and conversation event for “A man from the future” at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester is now sold out. The conversation will also be filmed and made available to watch online shortly afterwards, with further details to be revealed here in due course.
On this day 30 years ago, Pet Shop Boys released their sixth studio album, “Bilingual”. This was taken in 1996 by Andy Earl during a publicity session for “Single-bilingual”.
We enjoyed our visit to Bletchley Park with Andrew Hodges last week to film a piece about “A man from the future” and Alan Turing for BBC News. There will be further news about this project in a couple of days. Neil and Chris xx
Photo: Charlie Coletta
- It was our last concert of the summer tour last night in Esbjerg, Denmark. Wet and windy but still fun! Thanks to everyone who came to one or more of the shows! See you in 2027. xx
Photo credit: Morten Rygaard
Esbjerg. Suset Festival tonight. Last show of the summer!
The Tracey Emin sculpture by the Munch Museum on a beautiful day in Oslo.
Morning coffee in Oslo.
Pet Shop Boys’ “Se a vida é (That’s the way life is)” was released as a single on this day 30 years ago. A video for the song was filmed at the Wet ‘n’ Wild theme park in Orlando, Florida, directed by photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber who also made the videos for “Being boring” and “I get along”.