Although they’re often considered to be something of a national treasure these days, it’s still hard to believe 40 years have now passed since the debut Pet Shop Boys album, Please, first introduced us the duo’s unique brand of sophisticated, quintessentially British synthpop. At 72 and 67 respectively, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s popular peak as a chart-topping singles machine, producing iconic hits like West End Girls, It’s A Sin and Always On My Mind, is long behind them. Yet they remain a consistently interesting, intelligent presence in the UK music scene, as their latest album (their 16th studio record in total) once again shows.

A collaboration with Andrew Hodges, the biographer of the great mathematician, wartime codebreaker and father of computer science Alan Turing, A man from the future is a concept album including songs, spoken word and electronic and orchestral music. The work explores eight significant chapters in the life and death of Turing, a gay man who was prosecuted under the period’s anti-homosexuality laws, chemically castrated and found dead at 41, but who is now universally revered as one of the foremost geniuses of the 20th century.

The record is built around the narration of passages from Hodges’ book Alan Turing: The Enigma, read by Juliet Stevenson, with the words edited and in places extended by Tennant and Hodges. The Boys contribute additional lyrics and the music, a combination of their trademark electronics and strings arranged by German composer Sven Helbig, who had previously collaborated with Tennant and Lowe on their 2004 Battleship Potemkin soundtrack.

The work was originally written back in 2012-13 and performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers at a late-night BBC Prom in July 2014 at the Royal Albert Hall. Over a decade later, Tennant and Lowe decided to revise the piece to give it more of an electronic emphasis, and Helbig reworked his orchestrations into a more intimate arrangement for just eight string players.

As you’d expect with Pet Shop Boys at the helm, A man from the future is impeccably constructed and produced, with the music shifting expertly to fit the mood of the different stages of Turing’s eventful life, patiently drawing the listener into its subject’s world. Particularly affecting is The trial, a poignant evocation of the scientist’s prosecution for gross indecency and the subsequent grotesque, punitive programme of hormone injections which rendered him impotent. Helbig’s string arrangement is especially well judged here, elegant and heartfelt, with Tennant’s gentle, sad vocals, Stevenson’s authoritative narration and Lowe’s alternately graceful and urgent keyboard work all combining to capture the tension and profound injustice of the story. Almost as powerful is the closing title track, which examines Turing’s towering legacy, and features a passage recorded by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown from his 2009 statement acknowledging Turing’s groundbreaking work and apologising for the inhumane treatment he received from the British state, which was followed by the posthumous royal pardon granted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.

A man from the future isn’t an easy, background listen – it demands your full attention throughout, and should be consumed end to end as an immersive, multi-faceted audio experience rather than a conventional album of songs or compositions. But as Tennant and Lowe so eloquently put it: “Our motive in creating this work was to make a musical memorial to Alan Turing who gave so much to his country and the world and was rewarded for it by being prosecuted for his sexuality.” In this endeavour, they’ve undoubtedly succeeded, and while it’s admittedly a distant cousin of Actually or even Behaviour, it’s nevertheless a record only Pet Shop Boys could have made.