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.“ 

1. Three Score Years
2. Stop Go
3. John Jonah
4. When Vincent Started to Play
5. The Nothing Box
6. Kevlar Heart
7. Every Happy Day
8. Time Turns Tail
9. Uncrowned
10. Deadpan Man
11. The Good Ship
12. Another Perfect Day
13. Broken Hearts a Go Go
14. When Did You Die
15. Rags
16. My Little World