ZODIAC

The original release of Zodiac is a selection of songs taken from the Marillion fan club convention in 1999 - a precursor to the legendary Marillion weekends that were inaugurated in 2002. This took place towards the end of the recording of marillion.com, and Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree fame happened to be in the audience, so this proved to be a fairly fateful concert - because afterwards, Wilson agreed to provide his own mixes for about half the material on marillion.com, which I think helped that album overcome the issues which had plagued Radiation.

However, this live selection in particular doesn't quite cut it with me. It's taken from the audio of the Shot In the Dark DVD, and doesn't sound like it's been remastered for CD; Mark Kelly's keyboard sound and Steve Rothery's lead guitar sound particularly thin, which neatly sabotages most of the tracks. On top of that, H's voice seems to have taken a beating over the course of the weekend, so his singing isn't firing on all cylinders. On the whole, this might be a nice souvenir if you happened to be at the gig, but otherwise there's better H-era live material out there to choose from.