First off I'd like to say thanks to all those of you who came and lent your support to the Childline concert at the Hard Rock Cafe the other Thursday. It was great to see you all there and raise so much money for such a good cause. Yes, I had a few technical problems, but apart from that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Saturday the 24th saw us up in Litchfield and again many of you came out in the cold (well I thought it was cold) to see our show, so thanks for that.

On the recording front, Mike and Steve H have been busy in the studio, so I have been working at home on various overdub ideas which I then send to Mike to see if they might add to the melee. I mainly work on backing vocal ideas but sometimes come up with the odd keyboard or orchestral line which might add to a section. The other thing I am doing is trawling through all the jam ideas that I have previously marked as good or interesting, to see if any of them could be added between the songs as incidental music to enhance the whole album. One or two things of these are sounding promising to me.

Pete

"We have flown here from Chile to see you.. the plane circled Heathrow for ages and made us very late.. we only saw a few minutes of your set.. It was still worth it..." How can a statement like that not lift anyone's spirits? We really do have the best fans in the world.

I decided to break the routine and wear a white shirt for the Hard Rock Cafe gig... fatal. Five minutes before I was due to join the boys on stage, my glass holding a pint of Pepsi exploded for no apparent reason. Did make me laugh. Back to black in future. Although I was only playing a total of four numbers the gig was thoroughly enjoyable, and raising a few thousand pounds for Childline was the icing on the cake. A big thank you to everyone involved, especially Ian Duncan and all of his staff at the Hard Rock. What a great bunch of people.

Instructions from Rich (our tour manager) for the Acoustic Festival: get to the gig at 5pm, on stage at 8.30. You can soak up the festival atmosphere and chill out for a few hours before the gig. Well, the atmosphere was really good, as were the Mexican burritos and chocolate/marshmallow pancakes that I sampled. As for chilling out, I was bloody freezing. I even toyed with the idea of buying a tie-dyed poncho just to keep hypothermia away. The gig itself - although marred by a few technical problems - seemed to go down very well. Thanks for the warm reception that you gave us. Hope to see you at a hot, sweaty, loud gig in the near future.

Meanwhile in the Studio, Mike and H are very busy recording vocals this week. All sounding Fab. Mark's working on some great keyboard parts. Steve R has put down some fantastic guitar (I especially like what he has done on a track called Asylum Satellite). Pete, as usual, rock solid bass playing. He really is a twenty-four-hour musician. His enthusiasm is an inspiration. This is one of my most favourite times of the whole recording process; all the drums are finished and the boys are beavering away adding their magic. Very exciting...

Cheers...

Ian

Win Marillion Weekend 2009 VIP Passes!

You can win two VIP passes for the Marillion Weekends 2009 in either the Netherlands or Canada! These passes are "Access All Areas" - you will be able to watch sound checks, come back stage and - of course - meet the band!

To enter, just send us a photograph of YOU wearing a Marillion T-shirt (or other item of Marillion clothing) in the most bizarre, glamorous, extraordinary or weird place you can think of - in front of the Taj Mahal, at the House of Commons, the bride or groom at a wedding, climbing Mt. Everest, or even outside Chenobyl in a Radiation T-Shirt (hmm... that last one sounds familiar) ...you get the idea.

Full details are available from www.marillionweekend.com

Marillion Online Forums Unavailable

Due to a major fire in the data centre that houses our Forum servers, our server has, well, melted! This problem has affected over a million websites - and we happen to be one of them.

We do apologise for this incident which is out of our control and are doing everything we can to get it back up and running. Thanks in advance for your patience - we have no timescale as to when service will be restored.

Racket Records Spring Cleaning Sale - Last Chance!

Spring is quickly turning into Summer (well, at least according to the calendar!) which means the Racket Records Spring Cleaning sale is ALSO coming to an end.

Many items have now sold out, but there are still plenty more still available at greatly reduced prices. Be sure to head over to www.marillion.com/shop and pick up a bargain before it's too late!