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Those who are familiar with the type of products i tend to review will see immediately why i favour Rev Hammers album, Freeborn John, so much. It combines the two things that many people associate me with, obscure musical offerings and the backwaters of history and on this occasion they have been finely crafted together. Before we get stuck in to this rare musical offering, two introductions are in order.

Rev Hammer, or Stephen Ryan to reveal his given name, started life as a busker and after combating the fear of getting up on stage, joined with like minded musician Bi Sickle to form alternative duo Hammer and Sickle. Along the way he became close friends with New Model Army front man Justin Sullivan, eventually forming Red Sky Coven with Sullivan, punk poet Joolz and bassist Brett Selby. After many years of releasing albums in a folk rock vein and touring incessantly with the likes of NMA and the Levellers, Hammer undertook his most ambitious project to date, 1997s Freeborn John, the musical biography of John Lilburne.

John Lilburne, much like Hammer was a radical and a protester and Im sure they would have been great friends had Lilburne not died some 300 years before Hammers birth. Lilburne was a pamphleteer, a political and social writer at the time of the English Civil War. During the war he naturally sided with Parliament, becoming Captain and after a heroic defence of the town of Brentford was captured by the Royalists, only to have his life saved by his loyal wife Elizabeth. Even after the success of Parliament over the king, Lilburne continued to protest about social conditions and for political changes, becoming a leading light in the radical Leveller movement and remaining a thorn in the side of Cromwell. The tail end of his life was spent in and out of prison and he remains an icon and hero to social reformers and radical protesters to this day.

The album is not your standard music album, containing a mix of songs, instrumentals, speeches and soundtracks all linking together to form a narrative and musical journey through Lilburne's life. It also contains a fantastic array of guests to play the various parts in this historical musical odyssey. Hammer himself plays the part of John Lilburne and a violin lead intro takes us to the first scene, 1637 and the Pillory of Lilburne, his crime sedition and printing lies. A mandolin and electric guitar join together to reinforce the connection between the present and the past, the music a hybrid of old and

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