Zems

Confidential
Electronic Press Kit

The debut album from guitarist
and composer Rhys John Stubbs.
To be released 3rd April 2026
by Bigfoot Engineering Ltd.

1. 1944

My grandad fled Latvia in 1944. He was thirty four years old, the same age as me when I composed this piece. He left everyone and everything behind amid terror and confusion. He eventually made it to England as a refugee of war and started a family of his own. Forty seven years later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, he was finally able to return home. Miraculously, he was reunited with his little sister.

2. Paldies Par Kompaniju

I used to spend every summer in Latvia. It was like a time warp, but in the most wonderful way. The Soviet Union had certainly left its scars during its presence, but it had also left something notable in its absence. The most common phrase I heard in the wake of independence was ‘paldies par kompaniju’; when you've lived in isolation for so long, cut off from the world, it's little wonder that you'll often find yourself saying "thank you for the company".

3. Lidojums

In 2018 I had an accident which left me with a severed nerve and tendon in my fretting thumb. I was desperate to get back to writing music, but it was thirteen months before I could even hold a guitar again. Three and a half years later I finished this piece, and it felt like my hand had finally taken flight (lidojums in Latvian).

4. Lacplesis

After my accident I lost my vibrato, a guitarist’s trademark, and I also lost my ability to bend strings or strum chords. It became too confronting for me to hear, so I started listening to piano instead. I fell in love with the Romantic period, and it really opened up a whole new world of possibilities for my guitar playing. Lacplesis (Bear Slayer) is the eponymous hero from an old Latvian poem, and the story is filled with all the drama and passion of the music I was newly immersed in.

5. Pasaka

The inspiration to make this album came in 2024. At the Birmingham Guitar Show I played an acoustic baritone built by luthier Jacob Menear. As I began playing this piece, Pasaka (Fairytale), I heard it reimagined with all the sensitivity and grandeur of my newfound musical heroes. I started to formulate a plan to re-record a collection of my compositions tuned down low (zems in Latvian). Eighteen months later, I finally plucked up the courage to ask Jake if I could borrow the guitar to make this record. One week later, it arrived at my door.

6. Zvaigznu Puteklis

In 2023 I saw the Birmingham Philharmonic perform 'The Blue Danube'. My grandad loved the piece, and he also loved the eponymous river. As a civil engineer he specialised in water and talked often of the great waterways of Europe. But nowadays Strauss's most famous waltz is synonymous with the extraterrestrial, all thanks to the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey'. However, for all its celestial success, it didn't feature on the famous Golden Record that was launched into space by NASA, an omission which was heralded as a "cosmic mistake" by the Viennese. Though I can't compete with the glamour of the Voyager spacecraft, I composed Stardust (Zvaigznu Puteklis in Latvian) in tribute to Strauss.

7. Spidala

Many millions of people were displaced by Soviet rule. Rachmaninoff suffered from terrible homesickness and struggled to compose anything at all after fleeing from Russia in 1917. He sought refuge in America where he lived out the remainder of his life performing concerts as a celebrity, but his third Piano Concerto from 1909 remains a blistering reminder of his true powers. Thanks to the piece's infamous arc, which is nothing short of an emotional rollercoaster, he earned the motto 'through hardship to the stars'. Spidala is a character from the aforementioned poem Lacplesis, and when I first read of her journey from witchcraft, thrill seeking, and backstabbing, to love, redemption, and glory, I couldn't help but thank my lucky stars for Rachmaninoff's guiding light.

8. Sirdslietas

Some composers were as poignant with words as they were with music. Chopin once said that "Beethoven challenged the universe with the power of his spirit. I do not climb so high. I only try to express the heart of man". I've had similar self-deprecating thoughts myself, not least because listening to someone like Beethoven can come with the adverse side-effect of making your own music seem inconsequential. But reading Chopin's letters quelled my concerns that I might only ever try to express 'matters of the heart' (sirdslietas in Latvian). In fact, thanks to him, it actually blossomed from a fear into the motivation to write this piece of music.

9. Ar Milu

I made this album in the Bigfoot Engineering workshop over the course of nine days in late autumn 2025. I was heavily inspired by another Soviet exile, Vladimir Horowitz, the pianist known as 'the last Romantic'. He was once asked what sets him apart from his contemporaries, and he simply replied "I love every single note". At the age of eighty three he performed a concert in Vienna which is absolutely mesmerising, and I've tried to carry the heartfelt honesty of that broadcast through to this recording. I wanted to leave in the sounds of the chair creaking, the guitar rattling, my breathing, and fingers sliding. My ambition with this record was quite simply to play each note with love (ar milu in Latvian).

10. Liktendarzs

The first ever solo I composed for guitar was Liktendarzs ('The Garden of Destiny'). It's named after a collaborative memorial garden which has been built on an island in the middle of the river Daugava in Latvia. It‘s a stone's throw from a hydroelectric dam which my grandad helped design as a young engineer, and it still powers the grid today. Liktendarzs is a celebration of those no longer with us, where every flower sewn and every stone laid has been donated in someone’s honour. Our family planted a tree there in 2011 in memory of my grandad Elmars and his sister Elza, so that their story will live on long after we're gone. And though I think of these pieces of music as 'songs without words', as Mendelssohn so perfectly put it, I would like to leave you with this beautiful lyric by Joe Darion that, in my mind, could not be more fitting:

'"I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest. And the world will be better for this that one man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable star."

In loving memory of Lesley Stubbs.
This album wouldn't exist without you.

Gallery

Technical Specification

The Guitar
JKM 514 fanfret baritone.
Solid wenge neck, back, and sides.
Aged cedar top.
Made in County Down, NI, by Jacob Menear.
Tuning: B-E-A-D-F#-B.

The Recording
Sony PCM-D100 broadcast recorder.
Sennheiser HD 650 headphones.

The Mix
Reaper (DAW).
Waves PuigTec EQP1A.
Waves PuigChild 670.
Waves IR1.
Waves Kramer HLS.
Waves API-2500.