Steven Hall, the man behind the Nirosta Steel moniker, is fond of mentioning the notion of “deep play.” It’s a phrase coined by the 18th-century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham that describes a game with impossible odds, one that no sane or rational person would ever sign up for. More than amateurism or religion, “deep play” seems to have been the governing principle of how the musician has navigated his remarkable life.
Hall moved to America from Scotland after urging his widowed mother to marry her closest suitor, studied poetry with Allen Ginsberg, Buddhism with the Chögyam Trungpa (the teacher who popularized the idea of “first thought, best thought”), and found his ultimate creative partner in the late Arthur Russell. Hall shared his appreciation of “deep play” with Russell, and in time, it became the animating spirit of their many recordings together. After all, what is music but an extended bout of play? A conspiracy between an artist, collaborators, and audience to test the limits and possibility of sound? “I want there to be no distinction between rehearsal, performance, and studio recording,” he summed up in a recent conversation with Tone Glow. “There should be no difference—they should all be one. It’s as if you’re walking continuously from one to the next, and it’s all one party from beginning to end.”
Play is an essential human behavior, but it has also never done much to launch and sustain a career. Unlike Russell, whose legacy has been beautifully maintained in books, films, and re-releases, Hall’s solo work has only been available as a series of rarities and independent releases. He has been a generous friend, serving as a reliable talking head and stoking Russell’s legacy through his project, Arthur’s Landing. However there hasn’t been a sustained effort to put the full scope of his solo work into wider focus. Now, after partnering with the label Ulyssa, Hall has finally found his long-overdue starring vehicle.
As Nirosta Steel, Hall’s four-decades-in-the-making major statement, MY SKYSCRAPER, is a bit of a paradox: a gorgeously realized and fundamentally incomplete work of art; an archival triumph and one of the year’s most thrilling new releases. It serves as a small encapsulation of an enormous talent and offers one of the most vivid expressions of a queer sensibility indigenous to Downtown Manhattan that’s all but vanished from the Earth. It not only establishes Steven Hall as one of Russell’s most valuable collaborators, but confirms that he was his true musical and creative equal all along.
MY SKYSCRAPER is first and foremost a party record—though the location, company, and vibe of the party change from track to track. For every song as fun and immediate as “English Party”—which began as a potential demo for Madonna—Hall will throw a curveball that is weirder and dirtier than the last. He has a stark oddness to his delivery that places him in the same league as David Byrne or Jonathan Richman, and a handsome, lascivious edge to his voice that makes his more smutty songs feel almost indecent. Even when there are moments that verge on the ridiculous, like the insistent, falsetto brags of “Yhema” or the swooping Chinese opera vocals of “Mohan (Mandarin Version),” Hall has a phenomenal ability to turn on a dime and seduce you again. On its face, “Boss Trix (Benny’s Song)” sounds simply like a lost jewel of Balearic disco. Over muted strings and a guitar that bounces and flirts to the beat, Hall sings, “It’s all coming down/Blessings of peace and love!” The song was inspired by his boyfriend, who, when aroused, came over his head. To lightly torture the Buddhist idea of non-dualism, it’s both filthy and hysterical—so moving, so funny, all at once.
Much of MY SKYSCRAPER is based on the skeletons of songs that were revisited decades later and augmented with subtle production. Like other latter-day classics by Cindy Lee and Los Thuthanaka, the record seems to exist in its own time warp, echoing through the years while confounding any simple, linear notion of tradition or progress. For an album that feels like a major artistic statement, almost none of the songs have a single definitive version. Many of Nirosta Steel’s songs come in multiple musical permutations, which feature small tweaks that result in radically different emotional effects. “First Love,” for instance, exists here as both an echo-laden lo-fi recording and an ecstatic disco mix; the former’s stripped-down vocals turn the song into a shaky elegy for lost innocence while the latter assumes the sweet hopefulness of young love and turns it into a musical mirror ball.
One common musical principle that Hall and Russell both clung to was an aversion to vibrato and a preference for working with pure tone and drone. MY SKYSCRAPER follows this ethos and achieves a phenomenal depth of sound that feels akin to stepping through a cloud. “Go for the Night” swelters with muted horns, sultry vocals, and twanging guitars, conjuring a momentary heatwave through pure texture alone. Hall is just as effective in more minimal moments. The a capella “Greyboy” is a desperate plea for understanding, to make sense of why he’s been left for a boy with grey hair. Multitracking his voice into a haunted choir, the effect as his vocals rise and cut out is absolutely gutting. It is akin to listening to an endangered bird’s song, pausing for a duet that its mate will never answer. The only thing you can make out are snatches of breath, before the multi-tracking swoops in even louder and more pained.
The flipside to Hall’s party-hard ethos is songs that seek to inhabit the present moment. The strains of Buddhism are most felt on the two-part “Fresh Feeling” and “Special Weakness,” 22 minutes of Russell’s insistent drumming and Hall’s anxiously strung guitar. The two command every second of its length. But what elevates the songs into a dyptych masterpiece is its struggle to name and inhabit a feeling when reckoning with another person’s heart. “What do you do when you find yourself/In love at two places at the same time,” he pants over the relentless beat, “I can’t seem to find/Love in future time/So I’m going back to a love/in present tense.”
“Above all, play requires freedom,” the poet and naturalist, Diane Ackerman, wrote, “One chooses to play. Play’s rules may be enforced, but play is not like life’s other dramas. It happens outside ordinary life, and it requires freedom.” Despite being years in the making, what makes MY SKYSCRAPER feel so special is that it asks you to engage with his work as open-heartedly as he made it. Its greatest achievement is the way it simply stands for itself. It is music that is here to be played; it demands much of you and gives much of itself, and in the process makes the present seem like the only place to want to be.
