For producer and multi-instrumentalist Liam Shortall, aka corto.alto, home is the greatest inspiration of all. Growing up in Glasgow and studying at the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, his jazz-inflected, intricately layered productions have laid the blueprint for a uniquely local sound. Living in a flat above a busy bar, Shortall would invite fellow local instrumentalists around for all-night jamming and recording sessions, working out his maximal arrangements in their cramped space. These experiments led to the multi-volume Live from 435 in 2019-20. The following year, he began work on what would become his debut album, Bad with Names.
“I wasn’t sure what I was making, so I spent two years really trying to hone in on my sound,” Shortall tells Apple Music. “It became this balance of capturing the liveness of jazz and then producing bar-by-bar detail on top.” Over 12 tracks that tension between spontaneity and precision unfurls, from the orchestral strings of “Hello” to the weighty tuba grooves of “Slope,” earth-shattering riffs on “Mechanisms,” and gorgeous, lyrical balladry on “Hollow.” “This is my music—it is the closest representation of who I am,” Shortall says. “And it’s dedicated to my city, since it couldn’t have been made anywhere else.” Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track.
“Intro for Strings”
“Throughout the pandemic, I had been focusing on making music in the studio and was questioning my role as a live musician. One of the first gigs I played after the lockdowns ended was at Glasgow’s SWG3 and we hired a string quartet for it. I wrote this intro for them to start the show with and, ever since, those first notes have always reminded me of how much I love live music and how special it is. It felt like the perfect track to open the album with, to mark the start of a new chapter.”
“Hello”
“I’m trained as a trombonist and, when I started out, I was often boxed into making records that had the instrument in them. I almost wanted to get that sound out of the way for the album, so this is the only track with a trombone solo on it—it’s my punk moment! Other than the trombone, the tune came from a jam with my drummer Graham Costello, where he played this great 3/4 groove, which I then layered with a piano sample from a live show.”
“Xoxoxo”
“A lot of my tracks stem from ideas first formed in jam sessions and I remember these chords that I worked out really having an emotional resonance, although I still can’t explain exactly why. I added strings to them and decided to dedicate the track to my dad and my male role models. I went to music school when I was 16 but a lot of the other guys on my course were in their early twenties, so I’ve always had a lot of older friends that I look up to.”
“Slope”
“‘Slope’ is a track that feels stubborn. It’s centered on this two-bar drum loop that repeats and a tuba bassline that also doesn’t change—it gives the song a really resilient feel and a sense of tension. The melody is then chopped up over strings and piano and stretched as long as I could take it, giving it a sense of freedom over the rigidity of the rhythm. It’s called ‘Slope’ because I was watching people at the skate park going up and down ramps when I was making it.”
“Lara”
“While I was writing the album, I got hired to play in a band at a very exclusive wedding in France. The party ended up being this disgusting display of wealth and it wasn’t a fun job at all. Still, I was in this beautiful part of the country for a little while and I ended up writing this track as a kind of remedy to the experience.”
“Latency”
“Myself and my sax player Mateusz both moved to the Southside of Glasgow and decided to start our own jam night there because there wasn’t anything going on in the area. We called it Glitch 41 and it’s since become this really popular, amazing showcase of local bands and musicians with us as the house group. ‘Latency’ is the first track I wrote for that night, something simple for us to riff on, and it represents the act of starting something new.”
“EJS”
“This is probably the most post-produced track on the record, although it came from simple beginnings. The groove started in my drummer Graham’s sound check during a recording session, which I then chopped up to create a new loop, before adding a metric modulation section and a whole set of horns. It’s dedicated to my girlfriend, as I’m really indebted to her for helping me through this journey. The title is her initials.”
“Would You Mind?”
“I wrote this as a groove track that then builds into a crazy saxophone solo section in the middle. Both of my sax players, Mateusz and Harry, spent half a day trying to get the right solo recorded but they just couldn’t do it. I ended up asking Tommy Smith, a Scottish jazz legend who was my teacher at music school, to help and he sent me back 12 takes of the solo where each one was the best thing you’ve ever heard. It absolutely makes the track and it was really tough picking the final solo to go on the record!”
“No Water (Interlude)”
“Both ‘Would You Mind?’ and the next track ‘Mechanisms’ get really heavy, so I needed something a little quiet and calming between them. I was into sampling jazz brushes on drums when I made this and it came out like one of the hip-hop tracks I sometimes produce, since it’s all elements sampled and spliced together.”
“Mechanisms”
“This is another track written for the Glitch 41 night and it’s inspired by a heavy metal gig my friend Tom took me to once. I’m not that into listening to the genre but it was so fun live and I was totally blown away—it was a bit like the experience of jazz making sense when you first see musicians play it onstage. I wanted to write something with a big riff that gave audiences that same relentless energy and this is what I came up with.”
“Hollow”
“It’s perhaps a bit weird to place a ballad as the second [to] last track on the album but it needed a bit of a comedown after the heaviness of ‘Mechanisms.’ I used to play classical guitar as a kid before I took up the trombone, so this features a beautiful flamenco guitar line and strings for the first half of the tune, while the second half samples the first, like a mirror image. It has an amazingly calming, choral feel.”
“Bye”
“Although ‘Bye’ is the last track on the record, it was the first composition I’d written that really sounded like me, after having spent three years writing randomly and trying to figure it all out. This feels like ‘my’ music, like I’m not an impostor, but rather [it] has detail and a sense of direction. It’s the track that led the way for everything else, so it felt like the most full-circle way to close.”
