Scottish composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist corto.alto has been described as a traditional jazz head raised in the age of the internet. The moniker of Liam Shortall, corto.alto brings a fresh perspective to a heady mix of intuitive improvisation, electronic production, broken beat bounce and bass-heavy dub. His debut album Bad With Names was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize 2024. It’s an honest and iconoclastic work challenging the boundaries of contemporary jazz.
Championed by Gilles Peterson, Jamie Cullum, BBC 6 Music, KCRW, Jazzwise, to name a few, as well as the editorial teams at Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, Bad With Names brought together some of the UK’s finest young players, including pianist Fergus McCreadie, trumpet player James Copus, drummer Graham Costello, with the flair of a string quartet, taking the corto.alto sound in a new direction. It is also the most complete and sophisticated statement of the corto.alto sound to date – a riptide demonstration of his multi-instrumental abilities (read: trombone, guitar, bass, synths, programming, tuba, percussion), punchy improvisation and subtle electronic production that has stitched it all back together again.
Bad With Names cemented Corto.alto’s place in among the UKs jazz revival and has led to his forthcoming album on Ninja Tune, released just before this “homecoming” set at Kelburn, where this band have created some of our favourite memories over the years.
