Today is a particularly happy Friday, as one of the most anticipated projects for me is out (I was actually up at 12 am last night waiting to hear it first)!
Scottish Mercury Prize-nominated producer & multi-instrumentalist corto.alto releases SOME SMALL FORTUNE - a collection of music inspired by memories of family, nostalgia, and gratitude and featuring a star cast of collaborators Mick Jenkins, anaiis, Oscar Jerome, Vector, BINA., Terra Kin and Eriff.
“I only believe in making music that’s honest and comes from me,” Shortall says. “In the last six months a lot of my life has changed, my parents moved out of our family home and that led to lots of old family photos being discovered and me reflecting on memories. I kept thinking about my younger self and the experiences I couldn’t remember anymore. The record became dedicated to memory, nostalgia and being grateful for what I have, even if as I get older the past becomes unreliable. It produced a sound that’s lighthearted and jumps around – it’s an expression of me feeling free to prioritise the moment, no matter what it brings.”
Each track is artfully layered and strikingly different from the last, yet they all cohere in the joyous soundworld of corto.alto’s imagination. It’s a collage-like approach that is equally reflected in the album artwork, where hundreds of those rediscovered childhood photos of him are shredded, pieced together, and scanned to ultimately make up a new, warped imagining of his face.
“Once I’m writing an album, I’ll make around 100 tracks and only 12 to 15 will make the record. You have to fail 90% of the time, and once you do fail, you open yourself up to that 10% of sparks that can set the whole thing on fire,” he says. “I don’t have insecurities of not making something good anymore, as I know when an idea is worth sitting with and developing. This album is a testament to that process, since I would demo out every part, then take it to the band to record, re-demo, re-record, delete parts, and keep going while we lived with the music. I’m picking away at it in my room, but what you end up hearing is those sparks of each exciting, collective moment.”
