As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your
life is thinning out and will continue to thin out, until it thins out
into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: that went a bit
quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more
forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!…
then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life
thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and
unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered
continent. This is the past.
– Martin Amis
2024 marks 40 years of Pete Astor making records, a suitable
anniversary point at which to take stock and double back on
songs that first appeared on records by Astor-fronted combos
such as Creation Records trailblazers The Loft and The
Weather Prophets and Matador recording artists The Wisdom
of Harry, as well as selections from solo albums that appeared
on labels such as Danceteria and Static Caravan.
Astor’s motivation for TS&NR, as his extensive notes below
make clear, is manifold. Some songs are effectively reexamined
in the way one might linger over a resonant picture
from a box of old photographs – connecting with the essence
of a younger self. Other songs are newly recast in wiser and
more reflective hues, while others simply demanded
exhumation from wilfully opaque, lo fi non-production. The
songs chosen are not the obvious ones - there’s no "Up the Hill
and Down the Slope" or “Almost Prayed” here - but have been
selected for more interesting, often esoteric, reasons.
Astor is accompanied by an estimable band of co-conspirators,
evolving out of many hours spent playing music together on
records and at shows over the last decade. They are drummer
Ian Button, (Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge, Go Kart
Mozart), bassist Andy Lewis (Paul Weller, Soho Radio and
Blow Up DJ), guitarist Wilson Neil Scott (Summerhill, Felt,
Everything But the Girl) and keyboardist/ multi-instrumentalist/
producer Sean Read (Dexys, Mark Lanegan, Dave Gahan,
Iggy Pop, Manic Street Preachers, Beth Orton, Chrissie
Hynde…).
Together they’ve revisited these lost gems of songs in a
manner that has allowed Astor to balance the way that they still
make sense to him now, looking both to the future and to that
big and interesting new country, the past.
life is thinning out and will continue to thin out, until it thins out
into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: that went a bit
quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more
forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!…
then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life
thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and
unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered
continent. This is the past.
– Martin Amis
2024 marks 40 years of Pete Astor making records, a suitable
anniversary point at which to take stock and double back on
songs that first appeared on records by Astor-fronted combos
such as Creation Records trailblazers The Loft and The
Weather Prophets and Matador recording artists The Wisdom
of Harry, as well as selections from solo albums that appeared
on labels such as Danceteria and Static Caravan.
Astor’s motivation for TS&NR, as his extensive notes below
make clear, is manifold. Some songs are effectively reexamined
in the way one might linger over a resonant picture
from a box of old photographs – connecting with the essence
of a younger self. Other songs are newly recast in wiser and
more reflective hues, while others simply demanded
exhumation from wilfully opaque, lo fi non-production. The
songs chosen are not the obvious ones - there’s no "Up the Hill
and Down the Slope" or “Almost Prayed” here - but have been
selected for more interesting, often esoteric, reasons.
Astor is accompanied by an estimable band of co-conspirators,
evolving out of many hours spent playing music together on
records and at shows over the last decade. They are drummer
Ian Button, (Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge, Go Kart
Mozart), bassist Andy Lewis (Paul Weller, Soho Radio and
Blow Up DJ), guitarist Wilson Neil Scott (Summerhill, Felt,
Everything But the Girl) and keyboardist/ multi-instrumentalist/
producer Sean Read (Dexys, Mark Lanegan, Dave Gahan,
Iggy Pop, Manic Street Preachers, Beth Orton, Chrissie
Hynde…).
Together they’ve revisited these lost gems of songs in a
manner that has allowed Astor to balance the way that they still
make sense to him now, looking both to the future and to that
big and interesting new country, the past.