Levellers
Album: The Recruiting Sergeant
Label: On The Fiddle
Tracks: 5
Website: http://www.levellers.co.uk

Recently celebrating the 25th anniversary of their first gig, quintessential folk-rockers Levellers are just starting out on a three-month tour that takes in plenty of UK summer festivals as well as big-stage gigs. In tandem with this exhaustive tour, they're releasing a download-only five-track EP with a cohesive anti-war theme, all profits from the sale of which will be donated to War Child, the charity for children affected by war and set up to protect children living in the world's most dangerous war zones.

The EP kicks off with a special new recording of the Levs' contemporary reworking of the cautionary traditional Black Watch anthem The Recruiting Sergeant, on which the band are joined by the massed voices of The Copper Family plus Ben Paley, Shona Kipling and Dan Walsh - and together they sure make a mighty, powerful noise! The remainder of the EP reprises three further anti-war songs taken from earlier available Levs recordings (Another Man's Cause recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, then Not In My Name and Barrel Of A Gun), before ending on the original album version of The Recruiting Sergeant that appeared on the band's tenth studio CD Static On The Airwaves, which came out only last year to great acclaim.

Check out the supporting video on You Tube too, by the way…

In support of War Child www.warchild.org.uk

David Kidman