August - Script for a Jester's Tear further updated with some additional lyrical info via Mark & Tallulah Kelly's Prog and Progeny podcast, and the link between Keith Moon and Marillion's jester character.
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An Hour Before It's Dark - Introduction
The album was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Steve Rothery, believing himself to be vulnerable, was not comfortable in being in the studio with the rest of the band for much of the period and contributed his parts from home until conditions changed sufficiently for him to feel confident to return. Otherwise, however, the writing and recording followed the established jam-record-compile approach of previous albums.
An Hour Before It's Dark Pre-release Roundup
Introduction: An Hour Before It's Dark is Marillion's twentieth studio album (including Less = More and With Friends from the Orchestra) and the sixteenth with Steve Hogarth.
Pre-release Information
On 03/08/21, Marillion announced a pre-order campaign for album 20. Unlike the campaign for FEAR, Racket will be handling this campaign themselves in conjunction with Ear Music and Townsend Records. PledgeMusic, who did the FEAR campaign, having collapsed and been declared bankrupt in 2019.
Be Hard On Yourself
Introduction: The song was initially released to fans that had pre-ordered the album on 29th October 2021 (it had originally been planned for Nov 1st) with artwork by Simon Ward.
Reprogram The Gene
DNA can be edited through genetic engineering. The most common way of achieving this is via the CRISPR gene editing technique. This uses a modified version of an antiviral defence system known as CRISPR-Cas9 together with a synthetic RNA guide into a living cell. This enables a gene to be cut at desired locations and new sequences to be inserted, or old ones removed.
Murder Machines
Introduction: Murder Machines was released as a streaming-only track on 4th February 2022. h said, "I tried not to write about the virus. But it's been so much a part of life for the past two years that it kept creeping in. The terrifying reality that to wrap my arms around a father or mother could ultimately kill them, gave birth to this song. The lyric was then developed to hint at jealousy and heartbreak - the pain of watching the woman you love embrace another man, or the emotional "murder" of the serial adulterer. And, of course, the arms of the superpowers, and the psychopaths who sometimes have their fingers on the triggers. Beware the murder machines..."
In an interview for Smashing Interviews Magazine entitled Marillion's Masterpiece of Waning Moments, h said, "We’ve just lived (and many in the world are still living) through a time when to embrace another human being could carry the risk of killing that person. Not being able to hug the people you love is such an unnatural notion for us to cope with – like being in prison. The thought was how Murder Machines started.
"My lyrics usually work on more than one level, sometimes several. You can kill someone by loving them, especially if that love is unrequited or "the love that dare not speak its name," and I'm not just talking about what Oscar Wilde was referring to – but all 'forbidden' loves. So the murder machine is the virus, but it can be people, too." Thanks to Paul Rose for sourcing that!
The Crow and the Nightingale
Steve Gutteridge remarked that the song title was strongly reminiscent of the way that Aesop's Fables are titled in the format 'the X and the Y'. Fables are stories containing anthropomorphised animals, creatures, plants or other inanimate objects and which have a moral. Some 720 tales are attributed to the ancient Greek Aesop, but scholars are agreed that many cannot be by him as they predate him.
Crows appears in 27 of the tales, while Nightingale appears in six, but as Steve notes, they do not appear together. Generally the Crow is depicted for its horrible squawking and the Nightingale for its beautiful songs.
Sierra Leone
Care
This Strange Engine (WFftO version)
Introduction: For the version of This Strange Engine on the With Friends from the Orchestra album, an additional line was added. The line had long been included on the lyric sheets, but wasn't actually in the song.
According to h on the Corona Diaries podcast, the musical section was felt to be too long, and therefore the line had been excised.
With Friends from the Orchestra - Introduction
Introduction: With Friends from the Orchestra is the nineteenth Marillion album, the fifteenth with Steve Hogarth.
It was announced on 30th September 2019 in a news article titled We have a confession to make that the band had secretly recorded an album that would come out in mid October, followed by a short European tour.
Fuck Everyone And Run - Introduction
Introduction: Fuck Everyone And Run (F.E.A.R.) is the eighteenth Marillion album, the fourteenth with Steve Hogarth. The album title and promotional artwork was revealed on the 7th April 2016.
The word 'Fuck' is rendered as 'F***', but Lucy Jordache confirmed the correct title of the album is Fuck Everyone And Run.
It was originally planned that FEAR should be released on the 09th September 2016. It was pointed out that 9(th)+9(Sept)=18(th album), however, this was later pushed back to 23rd September 2016.
El Dorado
Introduction: In a pre-release PR piece from label earMUSIC, the song was described as follows, "El Dorado examines the notions of political entitlement and the modern challenges for the UK".In an interview for Prog magazine, h described the track as follows, "It's really about a sense of foreboding and a feeling that everything is going to change in this country. I was trying to paint a picture of someone mowing their lawn in a quiet garden as a storm comes towards them. It's an ecological storm, a financial storm, it's a humanitarian storm. It’s a feeling that there is a sort of watershed coming. I don’t know what it is, but there is just a foreboding. If there is a central theme to the record, it's that and the fact that we brought this about on ourselves and a sense of shame. El Dorado is for me about the fact that there’s a sense of shame over the migrant crisis. It’s about the way that this country has responded to the refugees spilling over from Syria, which is a war that we’ve stoked the fire in, even if we haven’t created it."
Living in F E A R
Introduction: In an interview for the Web UK magazine, h said, "I heard all these statistics about how people in Canada don't really bother locking their door but if you go over the border into the USA, everyone's got a gun by their bed, they're so terrified of crime. They're all shooting each other by mistake with these guns they've got by their beds, or shooting their children by mistake. Completely batty.
The Leavers
Introduction: In an interview for Prog magazine, h said, "The Leavers is a totally different animal. I wrote it really as a response to the corrosive effect that travel has on you. When you're in a touring band, or even more so in a touring band's crew, you’re hardly ever home, you wake up in a new city every day. There's a repetitive thing of the process of putting a show together, perform a show, you take it down, get on the bus, go to sleep and go again. For crew that's the life. When you get home if you’re off, you’re not being paid and you feel like you’re unemployed. It's also about how these gypsy, thrill-seeking people seem to arrive, do their thing and then are gone. You can't trust them because they'll forget you as soon as
they're gone."
White Paper
Introduction: In an interview for Prog magazine, h said, "It's about several things. It's a sort of sister story to The Leavers in some respects. It's about trying to settle into domestic life, about wanting to live passionately and in the moment. There's also the thing about slowly coming to terms with the fact that you're getting old, and you better get used to the fact that what you are railing against is very beautiful and natural.
There's a line in the song of 'I used to be centre stage, time I should act my age', and that really is what this song is about. It's about at one time feeling you were the most important person in the equation, and having to come to terms with the fact that you'd better stand at the side and watch something beautiful going on, rather than try and occupy that space yourself, with your own ego."
The New Kings
Introduction: In a pre-release PR piece from label earMUSIC, the song was described as follows, "The New Kings looks at the ravening beast that modern capitalism seems to have evolved into."
In an interview for Prog magazine, h said, "This is really a song about how the old systems of democracy have become overwhelmed and compromised by money and corporations. Along with the fact that the division between rich and poor is widening all the time. [...] There’s also a healthy sprinkling of tax evasion and a kind of overall loss of faith in what this country represents to me."
Sounds That Can't Be Made - Introduction
Introduction: 2012's Sounds That Can’t Be Made was the seventeenth Marillion album, the thirteenth with Steve Hogarth. A CD and DVD version of the album is available in luxurious hard slipcase form, featuring a book containing the names of pre-ordering fans.
The album had a difficult conception, with the band reportedly nearly splitting when a writing session in Portugal coincided with a period of serious illness for Steve Hogarth's partner and son, meaning the vocalist was unable to contribute. After some time off from writing, they recommenced at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios where the writing was unforced, and the songs started to flow. However, the delay to recording eventually resulting in the band compiling the later additions while on their US tour for the album – hardly ideal.
Gaza
Introduction:
Steve Hogarth's note in the Sounds That Can't Be Made booklet:
"This is a song for the people - especially the children - of Gaza. It was written after many conversations with ordinary Palestinians living in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank. I spoke also to Israelis, to N.G.O workers, to a diplomat unofficially working in Jerusalem, and took their perspectives into account whilst writing the lyric.
"It is not my/our intention to smear the Jewish faith or people - we know many Jews are deeply critical of the current situation - and nothing here is intended to show sympathy for acts of violence, whatever the motivation, but simply to ponder upon where desperation inevitably leads.
Sounds That Can't Be Made
'Aurora borealis'Also known as the Northern Lights, the aurora borealis is a meteorological condition with spectacular visual components, usually green, blue or red associated with high Arctic latitudes caused solar winds interacting with the Earth's magnetosphere.
A similar phenomena occurs in Antarctic latitudes.
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