Shelterbelt - chapter III of Pains And Boogies
-Listen to the album
-Physical copies (lmtd edition cassette)
Sea Unbound - chapter II of Pains And Boogies
- Digital streaming
- Physical copies (ltd edition cassette)
Slow Lightning - chapter I of Pains And Boogies
- Digital streaming
- Physical copies (ltd edition cassette)
Hellothere!
I am a guitarist and composer, from Riga, Latvia.
My latest album Shelterbelt was published in November 2025 by dis ce que in The Hague, NL. This record contains 8 original tunes that I had been carrying around for the last three years - writing and shaping them once in a while and occasionally also playing live on my tours. With this one my Pains And Boogies album series has come to a glorious closure, although that don't mean I won't be writing any new tunes for that fingerpicked banana guitar.
With the three-album project, Pains And Boogies, I was exploring the vitality of fingerpicked steel-string guitar traditions. Working particularly with the forms of early blues and ragtime, I wrote seemingly old yet entirely new music – material that pays homage to the great originators of these styles and also dares to diverge at its own will.
Beyond composition, as recorded (documented) sound works, these three albums contain a conscious break with what sounds to me like chronic hyperrealist nowness and that is prevalent in so much of recorded music today. In my own ear the dirt-cheap audio cassette equipment used throughout the recording process helps to place the trilogy’s music in an vibrantly undefined timespace, an opened-up era of sorts, thus creating at least a possibility to arrive at fresh ways of discovering what can be heard.
The physical version of each of trilogy’s chapters has been firstly released on cassette tape. Having been recorded, mastered, duplicated always from cassette to cassette, these tape editions are fullbloodied all-analog audio objects. In a similar fashion, the cover jackets have been typed out using a typewriter (by yours truly). Both the front image and all the texts were worked out and created in two steps - front and back - so no extra photoshopping was necessary.
A note on the nature of my musical practice
As a joint result of various factors, I mostly operate in a DIY manner to keep my music life afloat. Which means that composing, practicing and recording is done all by myself, similarly as setting up performances and finding opportunities to tour and play outside my immediate closest setting. Not to express any great dissatisfaction, it still seems necessary to note that the material and financial side of this art practice remains a constant up-hill battle.
So, if you, dear reader, find fascination in this work that I am doing and are in a capacity to show support – your kind donation will not pass unnoticed!
On an institutional plane, Pains And Boogies has been generously supported by Fonds Podiumkunsten (the Dutch foundation for performing arts), Valsts Kultūrkapitāla fonds (the Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation) and the VV Foundation.
Below, some third-person writing about my previous lives in music for the extra curious…
Edgars Rubenis emerged on the underground scene in mid-2000’s as the member of Riga’s experimental rock band Mona de Bo. Often considered to be one of the most vital forces on the Baltic scene of the ensuing decade, this ensemble has released 5 albums spanning psychotic indie garage, collisions of free improv and noisy drone rock. After the intense experimental guitar period with Mona de Bo and in an abrasive solo practice, Rubenis moved to The Netherlands in 2012 to study sonology and composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
Prior the experimental turn, Rubenis was a teenage blues-head guitarist in Driving South, an exhilarating blues-improv trio making waves in the Baltics around the turn of the millennium. In this period he also received first hand exposure to legendary players during repeated visits to blues festivals in Norway – first row seat at Buddy Guy’s concert, faraway corner of Duke Robillard’s backstage, and in jam sessions with Oslo’s young greats of that time. A meeting with David Evans in Riga proved to be of unexpected importance thanks to the direct-lineage insights about Mississippi John Hurt’s music shared by the renown delta blues scholar and musician.
