Due for release 25th July 2025 via Tapete
CD / LP
PETE ASTOR LIVE AT DAVID'S MUSIC
SATURDAY 6th SEPTEMBER @ Midday
free event
more info HERE
Unsent Letters is the weird cousin to songs on half a lifetime of albums. It has been living in the basement,
in a box and is now emerging, blinking into the daylight. Even though it’s a bit rough around the edges, it
turns out to be a rather charming and likeable fellow for all that. And with stories to tell.
Pete Astor is a musician, writer and educator. He led Creation Records’ groups The Loft and The Weather
Prophets, writing songs and releasing records that helped define the sound of the label and the emerging
Indie genre. He has gone on to a lengthy solo career since then; writing, recording and releasing music on
a range of labels including Matador, Heavenly, Warp, EMI and Fortuna Pop. He is Senior Lecturer in Music at
the University of Westminster. As well as touring extensively, he also makes records with David Sheppard
as Ellis Island Sound and releases his spoken word electronic pop project as The Attendant with Ian Button
(Go Kart Mozart, Death in Vegas) on his label Faux Lux. Since 2017, Astor has been signed to the estimable
Tapete Records, home to Robert Forster, Lloyd Cole and Comet Gain among many excellent others.
2025 has been a year where Pete Astor has revisited his first group, The Loft, who split up in 1985 and have
just completed their debut album, Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same. As the title suggests,
the band are in one way rooted in the past but undeniably facing forward into the future. Unsent Letters
comes from a similar place; there are songs here that Astor wrote while in The Loft at that time but which
the group never played, along with songs from throughout his forty year career that are now, finally coming
out into the world.
Pete says about the collection:?„Unsent Letters contains a selection of songs that, like all my songs, started
at home, but these stayed at home, tucked away at the back of analogue and digital drawers, coins lost
down the back of the sofa. Selecting, pruning, colouring, and programming these has brought to light songs
that were conceived as private recordings; they were made without thinking about them ever appearing,
and so falling outside of the usual parade of albums.
All musicians know that there is always the danger that, when you are making songs to formally release, you
can end up aiming at that often-unhelpful place called ‘perfection’. These songs, as they exist here, arrived
before that process could begin. And so, I think there is an openness, vulnerability and unguardedness that
I really like. Listening back, I have to say I’m rather proud of these unsent letters.“
Tracklisting
A1) Three Score Years
A2) Stop Go
A3) John Jonah
A4) When Vincent Started To Play
A5) The Nothing Box
A6) Kevlar Heart
A7) Every Happy Day
A8) Time Turns Tail
B1) Uncrowned
B2) Deadpan Man
B3) The Good Ship
B4) Another Perfect Day
B5) Broken Hearts A Go Go
B6) When Did You Die
B7) Rags
B8) My Little World