Steve Rothery

Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery embraced his more electronic side this year with Bioscope, his soundscape project with Tangerine Dream's Thorsten Quaeschning. But he's not ditching the day job: work is well underway on Marillion's next studio album, and there's his long-awaited collaboration with a certain Mr Hackett still to come.

- Words: Philip Wilding Portraits: Anne-Marie Forker

Like an iceberg, where only 10 per cent of the frozen edifice is visible above the waterline, a lot of Steve Rothery's 2025 has been hidden from sight. Admittedly, there have been the series of Marillion Weekends, the Bioscope album with Tangerine Dream's Thorsten Quaeschning and the surprise news that the band will headline a show at Pompeii's natural amphitheatre in summer 2026. But what of new music from his day job? Or word on his space-themed album, or that he's picked up his trusted camera again? And what about the ongoing collaboration with Steve Hackett? Case in point, when Prog calls him at home, Rothery has to be brought in from the garage, where he's been working on that very thing.

"It's coming along very nicely," he says of his collaboration with Hackett.

"The plan is to hopefully start mixing it by the end of [November], all his guitar parts are done. I've just finished three of the tracks, and there are another four to do bits and pieces on.

"It's been a while now, it was almost going hand in hand with the Bioscope album. Flicking from one to the other among and all the other things I get up to. It's instrumental and has this nautical theme, it's quite cinematic, there's a track on there called K-129, which was a Russian nuclear submarine that went missing in the early 60s. If you look online, there are these conspiracy theories that it was actually crewed by KGB agents, and they were planning to start a war between China and America because the wreck was discovered off the coast of Hawaii.

"Though it's not all conspiracy theories, there are some period pieces, too. I grew up in Whitby in North Yorkshire, an old fishing town, and there's loads of amazing stories about the lifeboat rescues throughout the years, and Steve and [his wife] Jo actually came up to Whitby, and we had a few days and soaked up some inspiration."