Anoraknophobia - Introduction

Introduction: Anoraknophobia is the eighth Marillion album with Steve Hogarth, and their twelfth of their career overall. The album was created in an innovative way. The band asked their email mailing list whether they would be prepared to fund the album in advance. Over 12,000 people said yes, and stumped up the cash required, and a year or so later, received the album. The first 7,000 people to sign up for this groundbreaking scheme were credited on the album sleeve, in a special edition.

Between You And Me

'Blow a fuse day'
As Rich Harding put it: "Is this 'Wanky Wednesday'? It's common office parlance for the middle of the week round here, anyway."

We think vulgar Mr Harding is referring to a slightly ruder version of the still rude-sounding (but not actually rude) "Hump day", denoting Wednesday as the middle of the working week.

Quartz

'Quartz'
Quartz is, of course, based around a metaphor of two different mechanisms used in watches, namely quartz and clockwork.

Tom Ward wrote to say, "The running of a 'quartz clock' is based on the piezoelectric property of the quartz crystal. When an electric field is applied to a quartz crystal, it actually changes the shape of the crystal itself. If you then squeeze it or bend it, an electric field is generated.

When placed in an appropriate electronic circuit, this interaction between the mechanical stress and the electrical field causes the crystal to vibrate, generating a constant electric signal which can then be used for example on an electronic clock display. The first wrist-watches that appeared in mass production used 'LED', 'Light Emitting Diode' displays. By the 1970's these were to be replaced by a 'LCD', 'Liquid Crystal Display'.

Map of the World

'A little runaway, letting go of all she's done'
As pointed out by Rich Harding, a hark back to Runaway on Brave?

Lyrics: Steve Hogarth & Nick Van Eede

When I Meet God

'A perfect mirror'
The perfect mirror is a reference to the Hubble Telescope.

"Hubble orbits 600 kilometres (372 miles) above Earth, working around the clock to unlock the secrets of the Universe. It uses excellent pointing precision, powerful optics, and state-of-the-art instruments to provide stunning views of the Universe that cannot be made using ground-based telescopes or other satellites.

The Fruit of the Wild Rose

'The Fruit of the Wild Rose'
According to the Royal Horticultural Society, "Wild roses (also known as species roses) mostly have thorny stems, single, often fragrant, early summer flowers, usually in one flush, followed by fruits ('hips') if flowers are not deadheaded. They are very attractive to pollinators, especially bees."

It isn't clear which variety h was thinking of, but one of the most common variants in the UK is the Dog Rose, which flowers in May/June with fruit ripening around September/October, which would fit with the lyrics "The fruit of the wild rose, Hangs here with summer gone, Voluptuous crimson, As the days become colder".

Stir your hips...  Feel the seed inside so sweet'
This line is like an inverted double entendre, in that the face value reading of the line is sexualised, invoking as it does a woman writhing at her lover's memory, and the suggestion of impregnation, but there is an additional play on words related to the fruit of the wild rose - the hips - that contains the seeds of the plant.

Separated Out

Introduction: In an interview with Bart Jan van der Vorst for the Dutch Progressive Rock Pages, h said, "It's loosely about a bad dope-eating experience I had with How We Live at Edinburgh Playhouse. We'd had this really long boring drive from Manchester and I'd made the mistake of eating a sizeable chunk of resin at 2.00 in the afternoon. 

"Now the thing about eating that stuff is that nothing happens for two or three hours, so you eat a bit more. By soundcheck I had officially left the planet and by show time at 8.00 that night I had lost my memory completely and didn't know any of the songs. The place was sold out and Colin Woore's mum and dad were in the audience to see him play for the first time in his ten year career - nightmare all round, really! So the song is based upon that feeling of isolation, terror and generally being at odds with the rest of humanity."

This is the Twenty First Century

'(...If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes)'
This is not noticeably audible on the song, although it appears at the top of the lyric sheet. My speakers certainly wont go up loud enough to hear if it's there. Maybe there's an audiophile out there has heard it? Rich Harding said: "I'm pretty sure the quote is a misquote of 'If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes' by the replicant Roy Batty to the Chinese bloke who made the eyes for the replicants, from the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner."

If My Heart Were A Ball, It Would Roll Uphill

Introduction: From the Web UK Magazine: h said: "[It's] about having a mad heart really. That simple. Having a heart that doesn't behave and can't and defies the laws of physics."

'She was only dreaming'
In the Summer 2001 copy of Twisting Tales (discontinued news pamphlet from the Web UK), Pete Trewavas said that they couldn't remember whether it is him or former drummer Mick Pointer saying it, but it's a sample from Chelsea Monday.

Number One

In episode 70 of The Corona Diaries, h talks about the origin of the song. "I wrote those words on holiday. I think I was listening to Whitney Houston on the radio. Whitney - God rest her soul - is a great singer, technically, but quite often... well, probably she got Sony Music on her neck, but we probably could have had a lot more out of Whitney if there weren't trying to make her be a megastar.

"[...]There still is, but I thought back then there was this tendency for record labels to find these incredible singers and push them into all these vocal acrobatics because they could do it, and you'd end up losing the meaning of the song or the soul, or maybe the song wouldn't have any meaning in the first place, you know, but it would be singers showing off. It's a song about ambition; don't you ever wonder if this will to win is a weakness, because it often is."

'You're scorin' at least 5.9'
Scoring in figure skating was, at the time the song was written, out of a maximum of 6 points per judge. Known as the 6.0 system, this method of scoring was replaced by a new system, the ISU Judging System in 2004. Competitors are now scored out of 10.