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  • Pete Astor 'Spilt Milk' - Cargo Records UK

    Fortuna POP!

    Pete Astor 'Spilt Milk'

    £9.99

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    Fortuna POP!

    Pete Astor 'Spilt Milk'

    £9.99

    Spilt Milk is the brand new album from indie auteur Pete Astor, previously of The Loft, The Weather Prophets, and other esteemed acts. It was recorded onto ½ inch tape at the home studio of James Hoare of Ultimate Painting, The Proper Ornaments and Veronica Falls, with James playing guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and singing backing vocals. 'He was', says Astor, 'an amazing band.' Other contributions came from members of Astor's live band, with Pam Berry (Black Tambourine, Withered Hand) supplying vocals, Jack Hayter (Hefner) on pedal steel, Alison Cotton (The Left Outsides) on viola, and Robin Christian (Male Bonding) and Susan Milanovic (Feathers) on drums.

    The album has all the hallmarks of a future Pete Astor classic, drawing together key strands and tributaries of his work over the years, blending intuitive songwriting, acute lyrics and incisive melodies. After many years making more experimental, electronic music Astor has come full circle to the sound that made his name. He explains, 'I'm back to being myself, bringing together sounds that I've used over time to make a record that sounds more like me than me!'

    From the opening track 'Really Something' to the recent single 'Mr Music' (a favourite of Marc Riley and Gideon Coe on BBC 6 music) the album's re-connects Astor's bespoke guitar pop with his long-standing embrace of The Velvet Underground's musical DNA. Other standout tracks include 'My Right Hand', a hymn to everyone's best friend, with guest appearances from Tony Hancock, Marvin Gaye, Philip Larkin and a host of ex-girlfriends; the slow burning drama of 'The Getting There' recalling the atmospheres of Astor's 80s kindred spirits, The Go-Betweens. Also, there is the wry drive of 'Very Good Lock', summed up by Astor as 'a description of an injurious medical condition that often affects the male of the species'. Elsewhere there are the gorgeous harmonies of the grown up country lament 'Good Enough', which wouldn't be out of place on one of George Jones'most heartbroken albums.

    Spilt Milk is part of a continuum: from Astor's beginnings with The Loft and The Weather Prophets on Creation Records in the 1980s, via his solo work through the 1990s and his more left field albums with The Wisdom of Harry and Ellis Island Sound on Matador Records, Heavenly and Peacefrog, through to his return to solo work with the Songbox album in 2012. As well as this ongoing musical activity, Astor is also Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, where he teaches, researches and writes about music; 2014 saw the publication of his study of Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Blank Generation as part of Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 Series.

    Astor remains in touch, engaged and vital in a way that is rare with someone with such longevity.  The album continues the story of one of one of England's most respected and significant songwriters. As Astor says, 'time passes, shit happens; some losses, some gains. Don't cry - but I did!'

    This is Spilt Milk.

    "Quintessentially English yet Cohenesque pastoral folk-pop songs bent the way of French chanson. Lovely, every one - and a striking reminder of Astor's influence on artists from Belle & Sebastian to Luke Haines" - Uncut

    Tracklisting:
    1. Really Something
    2. Mr. Music
    3. My Right Hand
    4. Perfect Life
    5. The Getting There
    6. Very Good Lock
    7. Good Enough
    8. There It Goes
    9. Sleeping Tiger
    10. Oh You
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  • Pete Astor 'You Made Me'

    Faux-Lux/Gare du Nord

    Pete Astor 'You Made Me'

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    Faux-Lux/Gare du Nord

    Pete Astor 'You Made Me'

    £8.49

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    Hand stamped and individually signed.

    You Made Me'is a Pete Astor album of other people's songs. It was recorded with producer Ian Button and features Dave Tattersall (Wave Pictures) playing guitar and Andy Lewis (Spearmint, Blow Up) on bass and synth, with Pam Berry (Black Tambourine, Withered Hand), Sean Read (Edwyn Collins, Pretenders, and a mass of brilliant others) and Nina Walsh (Woodleigh Research Facility, Fireflies) joining on vocals.

    From the pure pop ache of Gen X's Dancing with Myself'to the stoic heartbreak of Cat Power's Manhattan', via the shadowy rider in Elvis Presley's Black Star', to the teenage '50s gangster of Richard Thompson's Vincent Black Lightening', You Made Me marks some of the way stations of a life in music, songs to make sense of time passing and what that passing time can mean. Pete Astor shares his thoughts on You Made Me.

    Like everybody, my life has been sound-tracked by the songs I listen to and sing along with.  And a bit like a collection of photographs, I've lost some while some never even got taken. Nonetheless, some really good ones did get through. Here they are.

    1. Dancing with Myself (1980)'Gen X, the song articulated the loneliness of the long-distance musician - and it sounded great.
    2.  Black Star (1960)'Elvis Presley This was intended as the title song to a so-named 1960 Presley film that got retitled Flaming Star. The title track of David Bowie's swansong album is widely thought to have been inspired by this song.
    3. Chained to an Idiot (1974) This is the only original on the record - my response to the history that these songs have made; the tale of the permanent teenager chained to his needs, forever defined by the purest, libidinous pop - turning Kingsley Amis'quote, the provenance of the title, on its head. 4.Manhattan (2012). Cat Power This is Chan Marshall's paean to lost love and lost places, an elegy to the way we locate our lives and love affairs in times and locations - a hazy New York or London, say - that have now disappeared.  5.Nitcomb (1999'). Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.  Nitcomb'will ring very true for anyone who remembers all the long evenings spent combing out those stubborn insects. As a musician, Strummer was a lifer, and like those nits, so very tenacious. 
    6.Vincent Black Lightning (1952)'Richard Thompson This modern-day outlaw ballad tells the story of tragic love around the centrepiece of the mythic and very English titular motorcycle. 
    7.Solid Air (1973)'John Martyn John Martyn's plea to his lost and fading friend, Nick Drake, which becomes a touchstone and document of any lost and fading friends any of us might have had.
    8.Can't Hardly Wait (1987)'The Replacements Paul Westerberg writing and singing about how it feels to be away from home, on tour, magnificently lost, aching to be. 
    9.Courage'Villagers (2015)'Conor O'Brien's document of the heart's travails re-imagined as lovers rock, making a gentle, steadfast march out of changing love.
    10.Suffering Jukebox (2008)'Silver Jews We recorded this in tribute to the passing of Silver Jews'songwriter David Berman, a song about the plight of the record machine in the corner, devoid of agency, speaking for everyone who wishes things were different. Neil Scott (Felt, Denim, Everything But the Girl) joined us for this one on guitar. 
    11.One Man Guy (1985)'Loudon Wainwright III Loudon lived in London in the mid '80s. I once saw him eating alone in Parkway, NW1. Now I know how he must have felt.

    Release Date: 06/03/2020

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