<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Danceteria is having a moment. On the recent <\/span>Confessions II<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Madonna memorializes her own origin story\u2014sneaking cassette tapes of her debut single to the deejay over lines of cocaine\u2014on a track named after the New York City nightclub where CBGB punks and post-disco clubgoers collided in the early eighties. English New Wavers Soft Cell also named their forthcoming album after Danceteria, inspired by their time recording in New York forty years ago. The club epitomizes a certain era of the city: an explosion of music, art, and hedonistic freedom in the pre-HIV crisis, post-Gay Liberation Movement era.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While Madonna and Soft Cell nostalgize Danceteria as a lost Eden\u2014a place where you could bump shoulders with David Byrne, Debi Mazar, and Jean-Michel Basquiat on any given night\u2014Nirosta Steel\u2019s essential <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER <\/span><\/i>is a messier and richer document of that same cultural moment. The album offers a panoramic view of the longing, the ecstasy, and the restlessness at the heart of New York City\u2019s artistic heyday. But there\u2019s no nostalgia to smooth away its rough edges: <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER<\/span><\/i> is a lost artifact that somehow arrives exactly when it\u2019s needed.<\/span><\/p>\n Nirosta Steel is the alias of Steven Hall, a Scottish-born musician who became a close friend and collaborator of experimental music auteur Arthur Russell after moving to New York. The pair worked together on Russell\u2019s disco tracks, including the not-so-subtly dirty \u201cIs It All Over My Face?\u201d After Russell died, Hall began Arthur\u2019s Landing, a tribute project dedicated to his late friend\u2019s musical legacy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n MY SKYSCRAPER <\/span><\/i>feels like it comes straight from the source\u2014velvety disco leaking out of Paradise Garage, improvisational ramblings over punk guitar\u2014because much of it does. The album is a collection of forty years\u2019 worth of recordings remixed and reconstructed over time. Though Hall continued to record and reshape the <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER <\/span><\/i>material for decades, its songs still feel lived-in and well-worn. Like Russell, Hall approaches music through a <\/span>fluid, Buddhist-informed rejection<\/span><\/a> of artistic finality. An entirely different version of \u201cGO FOR THE NIGHT\u201d appears on Nirosta Steel\u2019s 2014 release, <\/span>Cool Fire. MY SKYSCRAPER<\/span><\/i> has two different mixes of \u201cFIRST LOVE,\u201d the minimalist \u201cRUFFIAN MIX\u201d and a pristine \u201cDISCO MOONBEAM MIX.\u201d The archival label ULYSSA calls the songs \u201cworks-forever-in-progress.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hall\u2019s endless reworking makes the album feel anachronistic, slipping back and forth across time. Take \u201cBOSS TRIX (BENNY\u2019S SONG),\u201d which Hall describes as an \u201code to a former Taiwanese boyfriend whose profound intellect was only matched by his ability to shoot a load of come up over his own head\u201d: the track assembles marble-smooth disco out of strings, horns, and dusty hisses. \u201cIt\u2019s all-all-all-all-all coming down,\u201d Hall sings, his harmonies echoing like a sample dug up from a seventies soul record. \u201cBOSS TRIX\u201d\u2019s closest comparison is not a Studio 54-era band but The Avalanches or DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ\u2014artists who piece together dance music from samples into something simultaneously nostalgic and untethered from time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n MY SKYSCRAPER<\/span><\/i>\u2019s transitions across decades would be jarring if the music didn\u2019t share the same connective tissue. \u201cLOST IN MUSIC,\u201d an analog disco track, is followed by a recording of Cantonese street musicians, which segues into the album\u2019s most polished and modern song, \u201cFIRST LOVE (DISCO MOONBEAM MIX).\u201d The sophisti-pop gem \u201cMY NAME IS NIGHT\u201d precedes a twenty-two minute improvisational tour de force \u201cFRESH FEELING\u201d and \u201cSPECIAL WEAKNESS,\u201d recorded in the early eighties with Russell on drums. Across every era, Hall returns to horniness. \u201cHuman body, bring it on,\u201d he taunts on the endlessly sexy \u201cMY NAME IS NIGHT.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n For all the quote-unquote \u201cfinished\u201d songs on <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER, <\/span><\/i>there are just as many rough drafts or snapshots into Hall\u2019s circuitous process. <\/span>\u201cMaybe I\u2019ll do a take where I sing \u2018YHEMA\u2019 like a Mickey Mouse impersonator.\u201d<\/span><\/i> He chooses to include an a cappella version of \u201cGREY BOY\u201d here, though a \u201c<\/span>full<\/span><\/a>\u201d version and a Mandarin version also exist. Individually, some sketches are more compelling than others, but together they all give the record a feeling of spontaneity and humor: \u201cA.D.I.D.A.S. \/ All day I dream about sex,\u201d he sings on \u201cLOST IN MUSIC\u201d; \u201cI\u2019d like to party with all the toys in the pool \/ \u2018Cuz I\u2019m invincible when I\u2019m wet,\u201d he later brags on the smoky, fetish-y, \u201cTHAITANIUM.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Given Steven Hall\u2019s relationship with Arthur Russell\u2014and <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER<\/span><\/i>\u2019s status as a time capsule of downtown New York\u2019s cultural prime\u2014it would be easy to reduce it to history. But the crux of this album isn\u2019t that it feels old. It\u2019s that it feels <\/span>timeless<\/span><\/i>. \u201cIt\u2019s silly and funny to be a pop star at 69,\u201d Hall said about himself in a recent <\/span>interview<\/span><\/a>, an irreverent perspective that encapsulates <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER\u2019s <\/span><\/i>appeal. The joy of dancing, sex, and music isn\u2019t bound to an age or decade. Hall\u2019s depictions of eroticism and escapism feel just as pertinent now as ever. This is all for fun, after all. <\/span>MY SKYSCRAPER <\/span><\/i>is Hall\u2019s 100-story monument to a timeless feeling. <\/span>[ULYSSA]<\/b><\/p>\n Andy Steiner is a writer and musician. When he\u2019s not reviewing albums, you can find him collecting \u201880s Rush merchandise. Follow him on X<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n