MARILLION AND THE POSITIVE LIGHT - TALES FROM THE ENGINE ROOM

This is an experiment on the part of Marillion and trance music duo The Positive Light, remixing material from This Strange Engine to create a trance reinterpretation of the album. On the whole, I'd say it's an intriguing idea; The Positive Light don't restrict themselves to using sounds solely from that particular album, mining a few other recent Marillion works to add the odd accent here and there (listen carefully and you might hear the French-speaking Cannibal Surf Babe say a line or two), and they generally tackle the material with sensitivity to the general emotional and conceptual direction of the pieces in question.

Once things really get underway, you have an interesting situation where sometimes the music will drift closer to the original, whereas sometimes the Positive Light will zoom off in their own entirely trance-based direction. The end result is a unique musical trip which I personally enjoy, but which I will readily admit is not for everyone. The big thing here is that it's first and foremost a trance album, so if you really have no enjoyment of that style of music at all you're not going to enjoy this one, even if you're a big Marillion fan.

But if you are a fan of Marillion and you like a bit of trance now and then, you might find that the two flavours go better together than expected. I wouldn't call this a particularly essential Marillion release, or even a highly recommended one, but it is an experiment which was worth doing and may entertain you if you have especially broad tastes.