A HANDFUL OF MARBLES

This promo CD is available free from the Marillion website. It's clearly aimed at the mainstream market rather than prog fans. The first song (You're Gone) sounds like it has a drum machine on it! The CD overall has the feeling of mainstream rock and you could quite easily think that it was another band playing instead of Marillion.

Don't bother with this promo CD. Get Anorak in the UK live instead, which has a selection of real well-played rock songs from Steve Hogarth era Marillion.

This is a free CD that can be ordered from marillion.com. The disc contains three tracks from Marbles and my favourite has to "Fantastic Place", a great song with a dreamy feeling and nice melody. "Drilling Holes" is more psychedelic with inputs from Beatles and XTC(as mentioned in the song!). "You´re gone" was the single track from the album. It starts of with some programmed drums and it has, as most Marillion tracks, some nice guitarplay. It´s not too catchy but oviously more pop than prog.

There are also three tracks from "Marbles on the road -Live DVD" and there you can find the best track from "Marbles" - "Neverland", a really progsounding song.

Beeing a free promo-CD giving new and old listeners the chance to catch up with the band I give it three stars both for the purpose but also for the music.

I'm not going to dock this E.P. a lot of points, simply because it is an E.P. or promo item. I was one of those listeners, mentioned in the release info, who wandered away from Marillion after Hogarth came on board. It certainly wasn't because I thought Fish was irreplaceable. Considering how long H has been with the band now, I think Marillion's batting average is as high as it was with their old singer. I thought SEASON'S END was amazing, possibly my favorite. If anything, I was apprehensive that the band wouldn't be able to keep up its winning streak. So if part of the reason for this release is to bring the stray sheep back to the flock, I am the target audience.

A HANDFUL OF MARBLES is primarily great music, from an album that is widely regarded as one of Marillion's best. "The Damage" is not one of the album's best tracks. "Drilling Holes" could gain from being trimmed, instead of cutting the instrumental part from the album version of "You're Gone". Those songs are exceptions. Listening to the rest of this E.P. made me want to check out the MARBLES album. So I did, for the first time in quite a while. I'd also buy the single CD version of MARBLES to have all the best songs; that's just my preference. For the time being, I'm convinced that A HANDFUL OF MARBLES definitely works.