corto.alto – GO (feat. Vector)
corto.alto has announced his next album, SOME SMALL FORTUNE, out September 4 on Ninja Tune, and shared its lead single “GO” featuring rapper Vector. The singles leading up to this one have made the case for how far this project can stretch without snapping: APRIL (W43) paired Shortall with anaiis for a soft, restrained duet about grief and resilience, written in a single evening after the two met at a Theo Croker show. WHODIS (W14) pivoted hard into a Dilla-indebted hip-hop beat for Mick Jenkins to work over. THIEF (W20) went further still, chopped classical strings and breakbeats road-tested live for the better part of a year before landing in Jersey club territory. Three tracks, three different rooms.
“GO” keeps that pattern going. It’s a cross-genre cut built on fractured, rhythm-heavy production, with Vector’s verse sitting on top of Shortall’s beat rather than smoothing into it. The video was filmed on location in Lagos, putting both artists in the same frame for a track that, on record, is mostly about two different worlds colliding without either one backing down.
Shortall has talked about this album as a deliberate shift away from doing everything himself. “I wanted to write songs with artists that I love and have a proper collaboration with them,” he’s said, “rather than be a control freak.” The guest list backs that up: alongside Vector, SOME SMALL FORTUNE brings in Mick Jenkins, anaiis, Jacob Alon, Oscar Jerome, BINA., Terra Kin and Eriff, recorded at home in Glasgow with his longtime band of drummer Graham Costello, pianist Fergus McCreadie and saxophonist Mateusz Sobieski. He’s described the record as shaped by memory and nostalgia, sparked by old family photographs he rediscovered after his parents moved house, and by his account he writes around a hundred songs per album and keeps maybe fifteen.
“GO” as an opening statement for an album that’s apparently going to keep zig-zagging the way APRIL, WHODIS, and THIEF already have. Whether the whole record holds together as well as that run of singles has, that’s something I’m curious to find out once it’s actually out.
