Back in 2008, I used the some folk music message boards to collect comments on a couple of sets of lyrics I'd produced about a real 2004 murder in North London. The victim was a young Somali refugee called Nasra Ismail, who'd been working the streets around King's Cross as a prostitute to fund her crack habit.

The feedback proved very useful, and ultimately led to Pete Morton writing some music for my first set of words and a young Iowan musician called Scott Riley tackling the second. Our intention was to produce a couple of new songs in the tradition of classic murder ballads like Stagger Lee or Knoxville Girl.

I've now written up the whole saga on my Murder Ballads website, telling the true story behind the project, detailing my efforts to produce a worthwhile set of lyrics about Nasra's death and offering free downloads of both Pete and Scott performing the finished songs that came out of it. You'll find it all at the link below.

http://www.planetslade.com/nasra-ismail1.html