Liam Shortall on the new corto.alto album: ‘It’s a time stamp of what’s going on in Glasgow right now’

The new corto.alto album is a volatile but sure-handed expression of Liam Shortall’s quest to combine the live elements of jazz with his absorption in electronic music production, writes Jim Gilchrist – and it features some of Glasgow’s most celebrated young jazz instrumentalists

Trombonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Liam Shortall’s debut album, Bad With Names, is credited to his pseudonym, corto.alto, which has become something of a byword for riotously genre-defying elements of Glasgow’s simmering young jazz scene.

The album will be launched live on 21 October at Glasgow University’s Queen Margaret Union. Shortall’s somewhat cryptic explanation for its title is that it’s inspired by “feeling like in the madness of it all you’re losing the ability of memory, or at least the illusion of that”. In fact, the album is a volatile but sure-handed expression of corto.alto’s ongoing quest to combine the essentially live elements of jazz with his absorption in electronic music production.

Some of the city’s most celebrated young instrumentalists, such as Fergus McCreadie, trumpeter James Copus, fellow-trombonist Anoushka Nanguy, saxophonists Mateusz Sobieski and Harry Weir and drummer James Costello feature, often swathed in electronica which at times could be the soundtrack for a Seventies sci-fi series, and propelled by heavy funk, hip-hop or dub beats.

Liam Shortall, aka corto.alto PIC: Sophie Jouvenaar

In the track Latency, for instance, funky horns lead to a trumpet break processed querulously through a wah-wah effect, Mechanisms sees a raucous brass breakout over a cool jazz groove, while Would You Mind? features a beefy tenor sax interlude from none other than Professor Tommy Smith, director of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s jazz course from which Shortall and several colleagues emerged.

“I’m just trying to make an aggregate of all the things I love,” says the 26-year-old Shortall, whose wider activities have included playing with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra as well as prog-jazzers Aku! and Strata. “I love jazz, and I love black American music – funk and soul, but I’m also really into production and modern methods.”

As to the meaning of corto.alto, the story is that his Spanish grandmother was married to an Irishman named Shortall and, yes, the Spanish for “short tall” is “corto alto”.

The moniker originated, pre-pandemic, as a Facebook page and a jazz-haunted Sauchiehall Street flat where Shortall and company videoed and posted regular Live From 435 sessions, romping energetically through funk, Latin Afrobeat, hip-hop and much else, but became more of a solo project during lockdown.

This first full album was finished eight months ago. “Since then, laughs Shortall, “I’ve released and promoted five singles and I want to move on to the next thing. When you write, record, produce and mix your own music … I’ve probably listened to each of these tunes a thousand times.”

He finds approaching the process of making music “incredibly daunting and vulnerable”, but also claims that, having in the past released material online every three weeks, next year he wants to try releasing a new single every day for a hundred days, “or something like that”.

Asked how he and the album’s seven-piece band perform these electronica-suffused tracks live, he is relaxed: “My attitude when producing is always, ‘Oh, I’ll worry about that later. There are some things you just can’t do live, but a lot of that’s just a case of figuring out another way that sounds best live.”

He sees the album as a timely record of Glasgow’s young jazz scene: “For me it’s a time stamp of what’s going on in Glasgow right now, but it’s also very personal. Everyone who played on it is a close friend or someone I really love working with.”

In the meantime, elsewhere there’s further state-of-the art Scottish jazz as Dundee Jazz Festival returns, from 2-5 November, opening with a powerful triple bill at the Gardyne Theatre, featuring gypsy swingers Rose Room, vintage jazz specialist Ali Affleck and the trio of Steele-Milligan-Kershaw.

Further artists over the weekend at various venues include award-winning soul singer Mica Millar, singer-songwriter Alice Faye, the Riot Jazz Brass Band and saxophonist Helena Kay with her trio and fellow-sax player Rachel Duns with her quintet.

For further details, see www.cortoalto.com and www.dundeejazzfestival.com