Pete Astor - Unsent Letters :: Home Recordings 1984-2024
British-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and educator Pete Astor may be best known for his work as the guiding frontman of the early to mid-1980s indie bands The Loft, who recently released their highly anticipated album, “Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same,” The Weather Prophets, and Ellis Island Sound, to name a few, but while occupying these crucial competitors in the local scene, he also found himself writing and recording material entirely on his own under a dim candle light that would soon take shape, and bring balance to a career that has come full circle on multiple levels. Having released several solo works such as “Paradise,” God & Other Stories,” “Time on Earth,” under Peter Astor & The Holy Road, his most recent effort “Unsent Letters - Home Recordings 1984-2024,” shows the veteran musician, like so many of his generation, provoking the early evolution of DIY methods revolving around independent music production and its oscillating origins among sonic scholars. Astor’s past is rich and colorful, but his piercing presence in the present moment of music mania is ever so strong. Conjuring the cryptic spirit of The Loft, who split in 1885 after what seems like a million years since first forming just five years prior as The Living Room, the musician has returned, or yet reminded us where he was all this time in between solo efforts, and a current position as a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster in the UK, where he tastefully teaches, writes, and researches music extensively. As someone who has fully immersed himself in the world of sound culture and never looked back, Astor took a much-needed hiatus from making music before returning in the mid to late 1990s and has since kept his thumb on the poetic pulse of creativity and melodic motivation for the last three decades.
“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.”
But something retroactive has taken place this year, as a brand new collection of dormant sounds has been unearthed from the romantic reality of basement life after multiple decades of collecting delicious dust like most tonal treasures do. For the first time since its conception, these lyrical letters carefully climb the stairs to the sonic surface, and directly into the eager ears of listeners, both new and old, to Astor’s atmospheric anatomy as a retrospective body of work spanning from the early to mid-1980s up until last year comes to life most satisfyingly. 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,” says Astor about the captivating collection of songs that range in melodic memory and never-ending nostalgia. “Unsent Letters – Home Recordings 1984-2024” is a perfect payoff for riding the train of time, with Astor along for the ride as a passenger preoccupied with personal connection, while this release unfolds into the universe over the summer we’ll never forget. With tracks like “Time Turns Tail,” “When Vincent Started To Play,” “Another Perfect Day,” and “Kevlar Heart,” the album truly feels like a time capsule jumping from one end of the galaxy to the next, while occupying a special place in time for everyone who was there, or simply trying to find the coordinates to the delightful destinations of the past, present, and future.
