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Albion Is Out

Albion is out today, on all streaming platforms and here on the website. Fifteen songs and two bonus tracks, two thousand years of one island.

Now we can say what we held back in September. The album begins before the first voice, with the island waking up, and then the island itself speaks. After that come Boudicca at the edge of the Roman Empire, a monk who watched the longboats arrive, the Conqueror's chaplain, a baron at Runnymede, an archer at Agincourt and a lady-in-waiting who dressed six queens. In the middle of the album there is a pause without kings and battles. Then a farmer's son goes to war for Parliament, a naval officer sings, proud and blind, of an empire, a weaver fights the power loom, and a young soldier on the Western Front thinks of an orchard in Kent. After the summer of 1940, a man and a woman stand on the same island and argue about what remains.

Not one of them tells the whole truth. The stories behind every song are on the Albion page, and that is where every song now plays in full.

A note on track 9: on the streaming platforms, "Grey and Green" does not yet sound the way it should, because the instrumental was exported from a single track instead of the full mix. That was our mistake. Albion will be re-released with the corrected track as soon as possible. On the Albion page here, it already plays the way it was meant to sound.

One island. Two thousand years. Start with the first light.

Albion Is Finished

In September we announced Albion with very few words. We can say a little more now: the album is finished. All fifteen songs and two bonus tracks are mixed, mastered and on their way to the streaming platforms.

Albion will be released on 10 October 2026.

It has become the most varied exTra album so far. It opens with Boudicca and ends on the island of today, and in between the music moves from Celtic folk rock and English singer-songwriter ballads through Hammond rock to a wartime film score and 1940s big band swing. As always, the genre follows the story.

Albion is also the first exTra album on which Tom Heinz plays on the recordings himself.

Who tells the stories? A queen who led a rebellion against Rome. A monk whose chronicle we took over word for word. A baron at Runnymede. An archer at Agincourt. A lady-in-waiting at the Tudor court. A weaver who refused to be a victim. A soldier who would rather be home. And two people arguing about what is left.

We have reorganized the website for this: every album now has its own page. On the Albion page you can already read the stories behind every song. From 10 October you can listen to the whole album there and on all streaming platforms.

One island. Two thousand years.

Albion — The Next Chapter

There is a word that has appeared on an exTra album once before. On The Iron Wheel, track ten was called "Albion (The Engine of the World)" — four minutes for the empire that turned the wheel faster than anyone before it. Four minutes were never enough.

One island. One name. Albion.

Albion is the oldest name for the island of Britain. It predates Britannia, it predates England, and it predates every flag that has been raised over that coastline. It belongs to no king and to no single century.

exTra's third concept album carries that name, and it takes the same approach as its predecessors: one idea, one world, one question. But where The Iron Wheel looked outward across civilizations, and Confoederatio traced a single country from the inside, Albion returns to one island and lets the people who lived there speak for themselves. A queen. A monk. An archer. A weaver. A soldier who would rather be somewhere else. Not one of them tells the whole truth.

We're not saying more. Not yet.

What we can say: the guitars are English this time, the accordion stays in its case, and the story does not end where the schoolbooks put the full stop.

Albion arrives in October 2026.

From the World Stage to Swiss Ground — "Confoederatio" Is Here

When "The Iron Wheel" was released in December 2025, it traced the arc of human history from Sumer to the British Empire. It was a journey outward — across oceans, deserts, and centuries. Now, exTra turns inward.

"Confoederatio" is the second concept album by exTra, and it does what no one expected: it tells the entire story of Switzerland in ten songs. From the mythological whisper of Helvetia to the algorithm-driven present, each track is narrated by a historical figure — in their own voice, from their own time.

The concept is simple but ambitious: one country, one thousand years, ten perspectives. A goddess. A Roman emperor. A rebel with a crossbow. A mercenary bleeding in foreign mud. A hermit who saved a nation with a single sentence. Two brothers on opposite sides of a religious war. A court clerk who became Europe's first whistleblower. A visionary who built modern Switzerland and was discarded by it. A woman who watched her country hide behind mountains. And finally — a modern Swiss voice, asking: where do we go from here?

Musically, the album is a deliberate departure from the signature Dark 70s Swiss Folk Rock sound. While the core identity — Stratocaster, Swiss Accordion, Brass — anchors several tracks, the album deliberately breaks its own rules. Song 7 trades electric guitar for nylon strings and a Liedermacher warmth. Song 8 replaces the Stratocaster entirely with an upright piano and a Gründerzeit shuffle. Song 9 is a full Glenn Miller-style Big Band swing — with a woman's voice where you'd expect a general. And Song 10 closes the album with an ABBA-inspired disco groove, saxophone solos, and a choir that fades out with a smile.

Every song was produced using AI-assisted composition (Suno), with extensive post-production in Logic Pro. The lyrics were developed through deep historical research, ensuring that every verse is rooted in documented events.

"Confoederatio" is available now on all major streaming platforms. The story goes on.

Tracklist:

1. Stone and Water (Helvetia) — The Origin
2. Bibracte (Julius Caesar) — The Conqueror
3. The Trial of William Tell — The Rebel
4. Blood for Gold (The Mercenary — Marignano 1515) — The Price of War
5. The Hermit's Warning (Brother Klaus) — The Peacemaker
6. Sword and Bible (Zwingli — Kappel 1531) — Brothers Divided
7. I Wrote It Down (Anna Göldi — Glarus 1782) — The Whistleblower
8. No Kings in This Land (Alfred Escher — Zürich 1882) — The Visionary
9. Behind These Mountains (The Reduit — Switzerland 1940) — The Reckoning
10. The Story Goes On (Quo Vadis — Switzerland Today) — The Future