Originally released for Record Store Day 2018 and then given a general release in digital form, this album is the complete soundtrack composed by Paddy Kingsland (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Doctor Who) of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for the 1975 post-apocalyptic series The Changes. Filmed in 1973 but held for two years, as if the BBC thought that the political and societal troubles that might coincide with the show’s subject matter would fade with time, The Changes is an evergreen. It’s tangibly a product of the early 1970s, and yet it has aged like fine wine. And so has its music.
At least on paper in the BBC Enterprises sales material, The Changes is a children’s adventure series, but hey, you know the drill: much like ’70s contemporaries like Children Of The Stones and Pertwee/Letts/Dicks-era Doctor Who, there’s a lot more to it than that. The story involves a piercing sound that suddenly renders all machinery inert, a “bad sound” that somehow traveled through the electrical wires criss-crossing the U.K. Now everyone – including the show’s lead character, adventurous pre-teen Nicky – has an aversion to “the bad wires” and to anything mechanical, be it a car, a television, a radio, or a toaster oven. The world is plunged back into a dark age of superstition, something that surely could only happen in a speculative fiction piece like this, and yet Nicky knows that the world used to be different – and better – and tries to find out what happened, with the help and protection of a band of traveling Sikhs, who find themselves unwelcome in a world that has suddenly grown paranoid of progress, outsiders, and anything different. Who would do this, what would they stand to gain from it, and can it be reversed? Yes, definitely just fiction.
Kingsland’s later work with the Radiophonic Workshop includes both the radio and television incarnations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and almost ridiculously memorable episode scores for Doctor Who (among them Logopolis, Castrovalva, Full Circle, Mawdryn Undead, and others). One of the things that makes him the most musically distinctive voice in the Workshop is that he never relies entirely on electronic sound. He has a gift for instantly-catchy earworm melodies, almost-funky basslines, and marrying purely electronic sounds with well-judged acoustic elements. That’s his style in a nutshell, and it’s dialed up to 11 for The Changes.
The main theme, a compact morsel of percussion, synths, a succession of dissonant chords, and a funky synth-clavinet line, is practically the least memorable thing on the album. The second track establishes a world-weary theme for Nicky as she sets out on her travels. The series is something of a travelogue, filmed entirely on location (and entirely on film, a rarity for the BBC in the early ’70s), and the music rises to meet that challenge. There’s time for the various themes to breathe and develop, and incidentally, that makes the album a great listen as well. There are some short tracks, sure, but for the most part the music is given ample time to explore themes and their variations. The family of Sikhs who accompany Nicky arrive in “A Special Kind Of People” with added percussion and a lovely persistent sitar presence.
A combination of the Sikh theme and Nicky’s traveling theme becomes the show’s end credit music, which frequently changed throughout the ten episodes as new plot developments arose. Unique to the various formulations of the end credit music is a heraldic, noble brass statement that concludes in a troublingly unresolved chord progression, sort of an unspoken musical “to be continued” – and when I mention these various instruments, they’re the real deal, not synthesized approximations. Kingsland’s use of synths throughout justify the Radiophonic Workshop’s name on the cover, but this album is more Kingsland unleashed than it is purely radiophonic. All of it is anchored by Kingsland’s almost supernatural ability with a bassline, which simultaneously provides some propulsion and rhythm and opens up interesting harmonics with the other instruments.
When I binge-watched The Changes for the first time sometime around 2016, I strongly suspected that I was hearing Paddy Kingsland’s greatest musical achievement with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, even though the rest of the sound mix was competing for prominence at times. Hearing this album without the rest of the show’s sound mix and dialogue strongly confirms that suspicion. Even if you’ve never heard of the show for which this music was made, I give this soundtrack a hearty recommendation. It stands up very well to listening without the context of the TV series, and between this and his handful of other memorable music highlights, I’ll never understand how Paddy Kingsland managed to avoid a huge career and worldwide recognition. Everything he’s done – including The Changes’ fascinating fusion of synths, electric bass, and layers of ethnic instrumentation – has stuck with me for a very long time, and the soundtrack as a standalone experience was long overdue.
By the way, the noise from the “bad wires” – three piercing, discordant minutes’ worth of it! – is included as a bonus track, but in controlled laboratory testing, it failed to incite me to smash up the electronic device from which it emanated. So there’s that, at least.
Episode 1: The Noise
- The Changes Opening Titles (0:35)
- Home Alone (Nicky’s Theme) (3:05)
- Everybody’s Gone (2:07)
Episode 2: The Bad Wires
- A Note On The Door (1:14)
- A Special Kind Of People (3:34)
- Your Ways Are Not Our Ways (1:08)
- The Changes Closing Titles (56″ Version) (1:01)
Episode 3: The Devil’s Children
- The Bad Wires (0:58)
- The Barns (1:36)
- Life On The Farm (1:45)
- The Devil’s Children (2:17)
- The Village Court (0:56)
Episode 4: Hostages!
- The Forge (1:34)
- Hostages! (4:48)
- Rescue (5:43)
- The Changes Closing Titles (67″ Version) (1:10)
Episode 5: Witchcraft
- The End Of The Rescue (0:30)
- A Farewell (0:43)
- A Journey, And Arrival at Henley Farm (3:21)
Episode 6: A Pile Of Stones
- Sentence Of Death (3:07)
- Leaving Shipton (3:09)
Episode 7: Heartsease
- Heartsease (4:09)
- At Purton Bridge (1:10)
- The Changes Closing Titles (63″ Version) (1:07)
Episode 8: Lightning!
- After The Bridge (1:59)
- Michael And Mary (2:09)
Episode 9: The Quarry
- Necromancer’s Weather (3:19)
- The Quarry (2:46)
- Mr Furbelow (0:59)
- Qui Me Tangit, Turbat Mundum (2:39)
- The Changes Closing Titles (48″ Version) (0:53)
Episode 10: The Cavern
- Into The Rock (2:59)
- The Cavern (1:53)
- Merlinus Sum (0:19)
- It’s All Over (1:40)
- Everything’s Alright Again (End Titles) (0:49)
Bonus Tracks
- Nicky’s Theme (Stereo Demo) (1:35)
- Theme 2 Demo (1:47)
- The Noise (3:10)
Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: April 20, 2018
Total running time: 1:17:47