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 Let’s All Go ‘Marbles’ With Marillion!By John "BoBo" BollenbergThe older we get the more time Marillion seems to need in order to release a new album. After steering the band in a different direction with albums such as Radiation (’98), Marillion.com (’99) and Anoraknophobia (2001), I’m convinced loads of people are interested to hear what the band’s new material sounds like. On the recently released X-mas fanclub disc (Say Cheese! Christmas With Marillion they already released one of the new songs in the form of a live version of "Neverland." With a release date pencilled in for May 3rd, both Steve Hogarth and Steve Rothery together with Marillion representative Lucy Jordache, invited a handful of friends and fans to the
And this meant the start of the playback of the entire album, which will be available in the shops. The main story is spread over four different parts which are scattered all over the album. However, together they make up a nice little story that happened in Hogarth’s youth, when he and a friend discovered that you could smash real marbles extremely high in the air when you used a tennis racket. However, after climbing towards the stars those bloody marbles came down with a tremendous speed crashing through people’s roofs. That evening people came knocking on Hogarth’s door and told Steve’s father what happened. His dad was so angry that he took all of Steve’s marbles and gave them away to a child on the other side of the street. It was the most devastating experience in our young Steve Hogarth’s life, as those marbles were his only valuable possession in those days. A nice charming story and Lucy Jordache has promissed that real marbles have been made for promotional purposes. A piece of advice: keep them out of reach of tennis rackets! Listening to an hour’s worth of fresh material in a noisy room is not really as ideal as I expected it to be, but it surely gave me an idea of what to expect. I don’t have the intention to describe in detail what I’ve heard, as I need to sit down with a finished copy first, but I can honestly say that there are very few solos whilst to my ears most of the attention goes towards soundscapes. So don’t be surprised to hear bits and pieces that could well fit in with Radiohead or Sigur Ros. Also Ian Mosley’s rhythms are very very contemporary and once again take Marillion on a rather different journey, but they do remain Marillion all over, don’t you worry! In more than one song, Steve Rothery delivers a very bluesy approach, which blends well with the rest of the arrangement. No extras have been added, so what you hear is Marillion and only Marillion, augmented with the pointed ears of the band’s sixth member Dave Meegan. However I hear those diehard Marillion fans already moan that they want to know just a little bit of what Marbles is all about. Well if you promisse not to tell anyone, I will do my best to come up with some brief descriptions. As said before, the real Marbles concept is spread over four shorter tracks that are scattered all over the album. The main melody pretty much sounds the same and finds Hogarth in a very relaxed, laidback mode. The opening track "The Invisible Man" clocks in at around thirteen minutes and is a canvas of sounds with loads of different textures and subtle playing from everyone involved. It is a sonic journey that, once again, is a daring experiment, putting it right up at the front of a brand new album. The single "You’re Gone" will be released on 19th April and can be found in two versions here. First you get the full version whilst at the very end of the album the band has added the edited version as a bonus track. It’s a rhythmic song with a great melody and some great guitar work from Rothery. Maybe not as instantly catchy as some of the band’s earlier work, but certainly a song which will grow as times goes by. "Angelina" begins with someone trying to find a decent radiostation. The song itself is a very jazzy ballad before it slightly evolves in kind of a song that could have been written by Chris Isaak. Floyd-like slide guitar opens another catchy tune by means of "Don’t Hurt Yourself." To my ears, this one sounds even more accessible than the one the band chose as a single! Some more ambient soundscapes form the backbone of "Fantastic Place," with Mark Kelly turning towards piano. "Drilling Holes" really is the showpiece for both Pete Trewavas and Mosley, as this is a dynamic ball of fire that reminds me of Split Enz. The final track is the lengthy "Neverland," which some of you might already know from some of the live gigs, whilst it also can be found on the band’s latest X-mas disc, as mentioned. This time however the orchestration is much clearer. So there you have it in a nutshell: Marbles, the kind of album Marillion tends to release time after time since Brave, the kind of album that grows and grows the more you listen to it. The only question I ask myself is why the band took so bloody long to come up with this album as I’m sure a year could’ve done the trick as well. However maybe it’s the four extra tracks on the double edition that really took all the time in the world, and like all of you, I have to wait until May 3rd to listen to those! Although, having two members present in Utrecht, I would have expected them to give some explanation before each track was played so all of us had some background information about each track. But as Hogarth said at the very beginning: "we don’t normally do this don’t we?" [More pictures available in the Gallery] Discography
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 © Copyright 1999, 2004 ProgressiveWorld.net/John Bollenberg |
Stairway to Heaven club in Utrecht, Holland on March 10th to listen to what they call the "retail version" of the new album. In other words, the selected few that particular evening were able to listen to the full album containing 12 tracks on one single disc. For most of us present who signed in for the limited 2CD edition, we’ll all have to wait until May 3rd before we hear the extra four tracks, they being "Genie," "The Only Unforgettable Thing," "Ocean Cloud" and "The Damage."
A small poster at the entrance warned people that a special Marillion listening session would take place, so if everyone wanted to be a little more quiet than normal so as not to disturb. When listening back to my minidisc recording, however, it sounds like very few people took notice. In fact, a lot of Marillion-related people kept on chatting away throughout the playback, so I ask myself why they bothered to show up in the first place! The Marbles listening session was a first for Marillion, so at least I expected some respect from those present. Prior to the playback I had a pleasant conversation with both 
Steve Rothery (downstairs) and Steve Hogarth (upstairs in the restaurant where we saw a real mouse!) and both musicians seemed very pleased with the end result, looking very much forward to the reactions from the media and fans. After a short introduction by Sjaak De Bruijn from Go Entertainment, the microphone was passed on to Steve Hogarth who spoke the following words: ‘Hello, good evening. God that sounds dreadful [the microphone was indeed working very badly!]. We don’t normally do this do we? Nice to be here in Utrecht. Here’s our new album coming up. It’s taken us quite a long time to record, but we think it was worth it. What you’re about to hear is, a lot of feedback [laughs], the retail version of Marbles which you can buy in the shops. That’s if you’re one of those people who didn’t buy the double album from us! In which case, you’ve got something [whispers] 'very special’ coming your way. I hope you’ll enjoy it so this is ‘it’. Oh and there’s a single but I’ll tell you about that at the end. [turns to Steve Rothery] Have I missed anything out? This is Steve Rothery [loud cheers whilst he hands over the microphone to Rothery]. "Hello. How are we doing? Mine’s a bloody mary. Yeah, we hope you’ll like it. 
It took us a bloody long time to make this record. Dave Meegan has done an especially good job …" "and when he gets out of hospital we’ll tell him won’t we," says Hogarth. "Enjoy it!"