The British Red Cross spotlights the plight of refugees and real-life stories of survival with the release of it's new charity EP, The Long Road. The album features performances from Robert Plant, Scroobius Pip, Tinariwen, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars and Kindness...

For the British Cross refugee charity EP, The Long Road, some of the artists involved teamed up with refugees in order to write songs inspired by their life stories. This offers the listener an opportunity to hear tales of the long and dangerous road that many refugees and asylum seekers have travelled.

The project is designed to create awareness and raise funds in order to help some of the refugees find protection and rebuild their lives. However, as much of a well meaning project this is, just because it's a charity record doesn't automatically mean you have to like it. In fact, of this album's five tracks I only really enjoyed two of them and whether I'd want to have them in my music collection is another matter.

For added awareness to so many individuals plight, this is a worthwhile project. Whether you actually like the music, on the other hand is subjective. Personally I only enjoyed the tracks by Robert Plant and Kindness - but even those I didn't like that much that I'd want to listen to them on a regular basis.

Track listing:

01 - 'Kek Algahalam Mas Tasossam (Why Is The World Silent)' - Tinariwen
02 - 'Who Are You' - Scroobius Pip ft Didier Kisala
03 - ' World Peace' - Leone Refugee All Stars
04 - 'The Blanket Of Night' - Robert Plant
05 - 'A Retelling' - Kindness

5

Nick Smithson