A good week so far in the studio. Good ideas springing up daily now from the jam sessions. Some days we have "drive-thru jams" where we come in for an hour, jam, and leave Mike H to the mind-numbing job of listening to every noise we've ever made in search of the good moments. I've done it myself in the past and it can be quite disheartening listening to a load of random twaddle waiting for the happy accident to happen. But when it does, I get the shivers..This is truly a mad way of writing music, but it seems to be the one that has worked for Marillion over the years (decades!?!). 

Next week we'll rehearse for the gig in Germany. Knowing us, we'll get more written next week than we usually do when we're "trying" so we'd better ask Mike to leave the machines in "record". Maybe see you in Herzberg at the hippie festival?

There's nothing you can do that can't be done..

H

I would like to thank The Web Portugal for looking after me so well last weekend. 

They flew me over to help celebrate their 5th Anniversary with a picnic in one of the parks in Lisbon on the Saturday afternoon. This was followed by a gig in the evening where I played a few Marillion songs and then joined the Portuguese Marillion covers band Perfect Strangers and played a set on bass. It was a late night and very hot. 

My lasting memory however is a tossup between pouring water into Edgar's car (a long story) and eating Mozambique prawns. A must if you have never tried them. 

Robin and Pete will be supporting the Reasoning at the Borderline in London on Friday July 22nd if anyone would like to See our humble show again.

Pete

It feels like things are really starting to take shape, at long last. They say you can't hurry creativity (or was it love?) anyway, we were having a good day until I had to leave early because I'm still not feeling 100% after having had tonsillitis. Ugh!

Mark

Off to the Sonisphere festival this weekend with my son Michael ...Metallica, Slipknot, Anthrax, Slayer... I wonder if they will be doing any acoustic numbers....

Even at my age I still like loud...Hurrah!!!.

Ian

One of the things I usually do when we start writing a new album is invest in some new equipment. I recently brought a new amplifier back from the States, an Oldfield Marquis 15 valve amp (http://www.oldfieldtubeamps.com) this has a vintage sound similar to a Vox amplifier from the 1960's and is a great addition to my set up.

Since making Happiness is the Road I've been using a lot of Jack Dent's guitars live and again it's great to have such an inspirational range of instruments to choose from.

Steve R