Abbey Road Studios Mode with corto.alto: “Being in the Polestar—it’s so cool”
What happens when you invite one of music’s hottest up-and-coming jazz stars to spend a day making music in the legendary Abbey Road Studio Two? To mark the launch of Abbey Road Studios Mode in Polestar 3, co-developed by Abbey Road and Bowers & Wilkins, we did just that. The challenge: reimagine two of his most impactful tracks to showcase the unique sonic characteristics depth of this new in-car listening experience.
In a quiet, white townhouse in central London sits a room unlike any other. Synonymous with some of the greatest sounds from this century and the last, it proudly calls itself ‘The Home of Making Music’. It might not be the biggest of rooms, or even the prettiest, but if these walls could talk, they’d have stories to tell.
On this particular day, the story is Polestar 3’s latest over-the-air update, which allows users to transform how music feels in the cabin, inspired by the acoustics of iconic rooms within Abbey Road Studios itself. corto.alto, a future-jazz musician from Glasgow, is here reinterpreting his own sound to explore exactly what Abbey Road Studios Mode is capable of.
“I think what Abbey Road Studios Mode does is elevate the listening experience,” says Mirek Stiles, Head of Audio Products at Abbey Road Studios. “Everyone I’ve sat in the car with, whether it’s an engineer or an artist, reacts the same way—with this kind of energy and excitement.”
Everyone has recorded here. It's like a mecca of British music.
Making music
It’s 1 p.m. and Liam Shortall has a trombone balanced on his head. It’s in between takes and he and his band are clearly having fun in Studio Two. And why wouldn’t they be? A Mercury Prize nominee and standout winner at the recent Jazz FM Awards (including the coveted ‘Act Of The Year’ category), corto.alto is redefining the way the world looks at British jazz.
The session offers a glimpse into what can often seem an unpredictable, sometimes chaotic, world of jazz. But that’s only to the untrained eye. A multi-instrumentalist, just as fluent on trumpet and guitar as he is on piano and trombone, the talismanic 28-year-old is very much in control of the many moving parts in this production.
His task today involves reworking two of his hit songs using Abbey Road Studios Mode presets as inspiration. First up: Energised. The natural choice was Slope, an uptempo, festival-ready track with a bold, playful rhythm that made it the perfect match for this vibrant preset. “Fundamentally, I wanted to pick something with energy,” says Liam. “The whole track is riffy and melodic.”
The Open preset, by contrast, invited more space. “Compared to Energised, Open was a bit more abstract,” Liam explains. “I wanted to choose something that had the opportunity for space and for melody. I wanted to let it breathe.” That track was Latency—a slower, more introspective piece that allowed the band to lean into the subtleties of dynamic range and spatial feel.
The result is something that blurs the line between car and studio live room. And that’s the beauty of the system. Abbey Road Studios Mode is about reimagining how music is listened to—not just heard, but experienced. With four distinct presets (Energised, Open, Intimate, and Expansive), the system transforms Polestar 3’s cabin into a mobile sound studio, using its 25 strategically placed Bowers & Wilkins speakers to place listeners at the heart of the mix.
“Being in the Polestar today and listening to those speakers—it’s so cool,” says Liam of his time in the Polestar 3.
The car test
For Liam, the car has always been make-or-break time for his music. “The car test is a very familiar thing for me. A lot of the time you listen to music in the studio, on your phone, on your headphones, and it sounds fine. And then you go to the car, and that's actually where I find myself making a lot of decisions.”
Mirek agrees. “It feels really authentic that we’ve created a car mode because a lot of mixes, to this day, are still checked in their cars out in the front of Abbey Road.”
Those words again: Abbey Road. There’s a reverence that comes with playing in Studio Two—a room that has shaped some of the most iconic recordings in history. "Recording my own music in this room with the history it has, with the people that work here, and the instruments they have, it's super inspiring," says Liam of his experience at the studios. "Everyone has recorded here. It's like a Mecca of British music."
But on one sunny afternoon, Abbey Road Studios added a new chapter to its story. One written in jazz, improvisation, and the unmistakable hum of creativity.
Abbey Road Studios Mode is available exclusively on Bowers & Wilkins speakers in Polestar 3. Click here to find out more about Polestar 3.
