MARBLES

Marbles sees Marillion take the various musical lessons they learned during the trilogy of Radiation, marillion.com and Anoraknophobia and apply them to more progressive song structures and textures, resulting in what I consider to be the fourth full-blown classic of the H era (after Brave, Afraid of Sunlight and This Strange Engine). It's a thoughtful, mature, and subdued work which - like the late-period Talk Talk albums which seem to have influenced its intimate and at points mildly jazzy sounds - mostly avoids rocking out in favour of longer mood pieces. It comes in an abbreviated 1CD version and an expanded 2CD one; I strongly advise getting the 2CD edition, because it's got Ocean Cloud - the band's best prog epic yet - and now that a reissued version of the 2CD edition is available to retail there's really no point depriving yourself.