‘I wrote album after finding late uncle’s mixtape’

While rummaging through some old boxes in his grandparents’ loft, a music-mad 15-year-old schoolboy discovered an old mixtape hidden amongst his late uncle’s belongings.

The label, handwritten in red ink, read “Soundtrack For The Twenty One Bus Home”.

Twelve years later, Dan Astles is now a singer-songwriter based in Southport, Merseyside.

Dan, who was only six months old when Joseph Deans took his own life, said he saw the carefully curated mixtape as a way of keeping his uncle’s legacy alive.

“I didn’t find out about the circumstances [of my uncle’s death] until I was much older but I could really see how much it affected everyone in the family,” said Dan, now 27.

“The thing everyone would say about him was that he lived and breathed music and I did too.”

Dan began to write his own songs as a teenager.

It was at this time that his grandad suggested he searched the loft of their Kirkdale home for his uncle’s treasured music collection.

“We climbed up there and I just found this incredible array of vinyl and gig posters,” he said.

“Amongst it all was this tape that was called ‘Soundtrack For The Twenty One Bus Home’.

“As a music-obsessed teenager it blew my mind.”

Dan said it was clear that his uncle had thoughtfully crafted the mixtape, adding: “It was almost like his own album.”

It featured songs from Radiohead, The Beatles, Kate Bush and Abba, sandwiched between interludes of Jack Kerouac poems and radio comedy.

“I felt like I could develop that connection with him despite not knowing him,” said Dan.

The 21 bus service would travel from Liverpool city centre to Kirby via Walton and Kirkdale.

“He would have got on that bus and listened to the mixtape after a night out or going to some gigs or something like that,” he said.

“So he obviously thought it was a journey worth soundtracking.

“I borrowed my grandad’s little tape recorder player and when I played it, it was all these amazing songs, all these interludes he’d put in to make himself laugh.

“I knew it was going to be something that would inspire me.”

Now Dan’s debut album – also titled Soundtrack For The Twenty One Bus Home – is both a tribute and a conversation with the uncle he never truly got to know.

Dan, who studied music at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, said: “The first song on the album is called Joe, Are You Listening?

“That’s written directly to my uncle. I wanted to write an album about family.”

The album also touches on the fragility of mental health.

“When someone dies in the way my Uncle Joseph did, the grief sort of echoes,” he explained.

“So increasing awareness of [mental health] was an important part of it when making this record.”

Dan said he was in no doubt that his uncle would have been “a sounding board” for his music.

“That’s what I always imagine. Someone I could send any demo I’ve written.

“I hope he would have liked it and thought it was cool and enjoyed it being named after his tape.”