By day museum curator Alistair Murphy is surrounded by the fossils, photographs and ephemera that tell Cromer's history.

By night the 50-year-old switches to keyboards, guitar, vocals and a mixing desk to craft modern music.

And, under the mysterious name of The Curator, he is releasing his first major CD, drawing on help from some big names from the music world.

The Sometime Soon album features vocals from Judy Dyble from folk legends Fairport Convention, and Julianne Regan from pop band All About Eve, while Pat Mastelotto from progressive rock band King Crimson provides the drumming.

The album is also a 'progressive' blend of discordant passages and melodic songs, which respond to Judy's manager suggesting something 'completely bonkers' would be different to the normal commercial material being released.

Alistair has played and written music since his early teens and performed in bands all his life, but also had a love of dinosaurs as a child. He came to Norfolk as a UEA student reading English and history who fell in love with county, stayed, joined Cromer museum staff in 1985 and has been its curator for the past five years.

Music, initially inspired by David Bowie and the prog rock bands of the 1970s, has always remained his main outside interest - from performing and producing to staging gigs for other bands at Cromer's Melbourne hotel.

Networking in the industry brought him into contact with Norwich-based music promoter Tim Bowness of Burning Shed records, who linked him up with Judy Dyble to produce, write and play on her award-winning album Talking With Strangers, which also features guests including Robert Fripp from King Crimson, and Ian McDonald of Foreigner.

It involved performing and doing breakfast television slots in Norway, and provided the catalyst, and cast, for Alistair's own album, which is released on December 20.

His singing name The Curator 'began as a joke' but was kept as stood out from the crowd, explained.

The concept was based on the fact that everyone waited for dreams that were going to happen 'sometime soon,' said Mr Murphy, who is now planning a second album that is likely to more 'commercial' in its approach.

Sometime Soon, which also features Cromer vocalist Diana Hare, a producer at BBC East television, is available at �7.99 from W H Smith, Asda, iTunes, HMV and Amazon.

Visit www.edp24.co.uk to listen to a track from the album