It’s the early 1970s in Germany. An idea is born for a childrens’ TV series set in space featuring a monkey sock puppet (Tope) who, clever monkey that he is, has his own space ship – a sphere.
Tope and his buddy Chord blast around having adventures in the sphere.
It was apparently all set to be a classic with German space/prog rock band Klementine Uhren lined up to provide a suitable spacey/trippy score.
However, so the back story goes, the band were none too happy with how things were working out and that was that.
The Sphere was immediately obsolete and that was apparently that.
Or was it……..now, Orange Clocks have “re-imagined” the score from episode 2 in their own special way providing us with a completely bonkers yet supremely enjoyable album of narration and trippy/proggy/spacey/psychedelic/glam/heavy music which keeps the spirit of the 70s alive imaginatively.
The “concept” being that one day Tope and Chode set off for the equivalent of a Sunday afternoon pootle around the galaxy in the Sphere only to be lulled in to an ambush responding to a distress signal……………and then the fun starts.
The short narration pieces are short, engaging and quite hilarious as the story unfolds.
Listening to it I was reminded of Bleep and Booster (c’mon – who remembers them then?) and Blake’s Seven style sets.
The music comes in short blasts too in between the narration going from the outrageously trippy to the most crashing rifferama and fear-outery soloing. Huge fun. Instantly engaging.
Think Gong, Steve Hillage, Hawkwind, Tim Blake, The Sweet and Slade mixed in with some proper heavy metal style stuff and it might come reasonably close to the Orange Clocks style here.
Now a taster for you. If you like it, Tope’s Sphere is available as a download or CD from the Orange Clocks BandCamp page. Links embedded below.
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