2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



All armies on all sides executed their own soldiers for “cowardice” or for “disobeying orders”. They remained criminally unaware of the psychological damage that this new form of warfare was doing to the people they had lined up and shot.

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



Soldiers would compose letters for family to be mailed in the event of their death. One Canadian soldier referred to these as his “Black Letters”. And when he was killed, his lover read the words: “Do not worry, my love: by the time you read these words, there will be no more war for me, only peace.”

Musicata dai The Dreadnoughts

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



A song about Gavrilo Princip, who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, which was the spark that ignited the first World War.

Gavrilo died in prison of tuberculosis several years after the assassination, near the end of WWI. This song may be narrated by the Devil coming to collect.

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



The Somme may have been the most brutal and senseless battlefield of the entire war, and soldiers living below ground in the trenches took on a new mode of existence.

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



As they marched through Belgium and France, German soldiers met with unexpectedly violent resistance from local populations. Their nervous, paranoid responses chocked the world. Sometimes, the actions of a single sniper would result in mass executions.

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



The Anna Maria was a French merchant ship sunk by the German submarine SM U-83 during WWI.

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



This song is commemorating the landing at Suvla Bay, a British operation against the Ottoman Empire during WW1. The landing turned out to be a huge disaster for British forces due to incompetence of commanding staff.

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



“The militant suffragette movement was stopped dead in its tracks by the outbreak of the war. Yet, those most intimately involved in the movement suspected that women could never return to their utterly subordinate position in society after it was all over. They were right. This song is a tribute to those incredible women who fought (and won) their own war.”

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.



“In 1914, German soldiers invaded Belgium and fought their first major battle at Liege. Many wrote letters home foretelling immanent victory and a triumphant return home. Already, however, these letters were stained with shame and regret.”

2017
Foreign skies


Foreign Skies is a concept album descriribing the first world war. From the intial call to arms, to women’s suffragests to a soldier being executed for cowardice, each song tells the story from a different perspective at a different time.

2022
Roll & go

The hangings at Battleford refers to the hanging on November 27, 1885, of eight Indigenous men for murders committed in the First Nations uprising that occurred at the time of the North-West Rebellion. The executed men were found guilty of murder in the Frog Lake Massacre and in the Looting of Battleford. These murders took place outside the military combat that took place during the North-West Rebellion.

The court trials were presided over by magistrate Charles Rouleau. The trials and hangings followed the Looting of Battleford, where the judge himself suffered material loss.

Prior to the rebellion the Canadian government's actions in the District of Saskatchewan resulted in starvation, disease, and death among the Indigenous peoples of the area. Traditional means of self-support, such as buffalo disappeared with the sale of lands.

At both Frog Lake and Battleford, some people took up arms against the wishes of their leaders. Some were sentenced to prison terms or death. Others fled to the United States.

2025
Polka Pit

The song is a tribute to the anti-fascist partigiani in WWII, in particular to a young woman who lost her life after the local occupying Nazi warlord discovered that she’d been aiding the resistance. So it’s a kind of descendent of the often-sung Bella Ciao, another anti-fascist Italian anthem.
The rhythm is sweet, the sung melody lines are haunting, the words are nice and rhythmic and poetic…