Marillion's Steven Rothery Kickstarts Solo album

After putting together a band to play the Plovdiv Guitar Festival, Steven Rothery has finally decided to record a solo album. As the Marillion guitarist wrote today (November 25th) on his band's website:

A very exciting day for me today and not just because it's my birthday ;-)  After twenty eight years of talking about doing a solo album, the time has finally arrived! Today is the official launch day of the Kickstarter campaign for my solo album The Ghosts of Pripyat.

Earlier this year I was invited to play at the annual Plovdiv guitar festival in October 2013. To prepare I got together with my good friend and fellow guitarist Dave Foster for a couple of writing sessions which went incredibly well. After a couple of days rehearsal with the rhythm section of Leon Parr and Yatim Halimi I realised this was going to be something very special. This Youtube trailer from the live video of the performance gives you an idea of where the finished album, The Ghosts of Pripyat, will go. 

 

The audio download of the festival is available at http://steverothery.com/ and the video download at http://steverothery.fetchapp.com/sell/eizeetip

The album will also feature a guest performance from Steve Hackett on a track called Morpheus and another track titled The Old Man of the Sea. Lasse Hoile (of Porcupine Tree fame) is designing the artwork so it's going to visually stunning as well.

 

Steven is hoping to get £15,000 by January 22, 2014 to push the project along, and as of 10:00 AM EST today it already is up to 8,644 out of 284 backers, so it looks like it will be a success.

Add your pledge to this Kickstarter campaign by going to Steven's Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2090204348/steve-rothery-the-ghosts-of-pripyat. Many pledge bundles are available.

UPDATE (26th November 2013):
By the end of the evening, the Kickstarter campaign had reached its goal, and then some. Inside of one day, the amount accumulated was £20,529, with 694 backers. This is the quickest campaign I have ever seen! Steven Rothery, whose birthday it was when he launched the campaign, had one hell of a gift, and had this to say:

Thank you all for your incredible support! What an amazing way to celebrate my birthday yesterday.

(...)

Mike Hunter will be engineering the recording of the drums for the album at the Racket Club at the beginning of February and Steve Hackett will be recording his parts towards the end of the month. 

We'll be flying over to Italy to play a couple of shows with Ranestrane on the 21st and 22nd February, more details to follow.

Thanks again, Steve