Marbles (album)

Marbles
Studio album by Marillion
Released	27 April 2004 (preorder) 3 May 2004
Recorded	2002–early 2004
Studio	The Racket Club (Aylesbury)
Genre	Progressive rock, art rock
Length	98:48 (2CD version) 68:11 (1CD version)
Label	Intact
Producer	Dave Meegan
Marillion chronology
Anoraknophobia (2001) Marbles (2004) Somewhere Else (2007)
Singles from Marbles
"You're Gone" Released: 19 April 2004 "Don't Hurt Yourself" Released: July 2004

Marbles is the 13th studio album from rock band Marillion, released in 2004. Unlike their previous studio album, Anoraknophobia (2001), which was financed largely by a preorder campaign, the band funded the recording, and it was the publicity campaign that fans financed for the album. Those fans who pre-ordered the album received an exclusive 2-CD "Deluxe Campaign Edition" with a booklet containing the names of everyone who pre-ordered before a certain date. The public release date of the retail single-CD version of the album was 3 May 2004 while a plain 2-CD version was made available from the band's website. A limited (500 copy) edition was released on white multicoloured vinyl by Racket Records on 13 November 2006.

In 2011, the 2-CD version became available as a retail edition in a mediabook by the Madfish label,^[1] reissued in 2017 as a simpler digipak edition.^[2] Madfish also released the full album on vinyl for the first time, occupying three LPs.^[3] Another reissue of the CD appeared in 2021 on Kscope.

The album did not chart in the UK, due to it being packaged with a couple of stickers, which is against chart rules. So despite selling enough for a top 30 position, the album was declared ineligible for the album chart; however, its first single "You're Gone", reached #7 in the UK Singles Chart, thus becoming their first UK top ten hit since 1987's "Incommunicado". The follow-up single "Don't Hurt Yourself" peaked at #16. Classic Rock ranked Marbles #11 on their end-of-year list for 2004.^{[citation needed]} The album is ranked at #53 on Prog Magazine's list of the Top 100 Prog Albums of All Time.