Steven Hall's 40-Year Archive LP Earns Rave Reviews
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- Steven Hall, a 69-year-old Scottish musician recording as Nirosta Steel, released the double LP My Skyscraper compiling material recorded between 1984 and 2025, spanning disco, folk, synth-pop, Chinese opera and ecclesiastical a cappella
- Pitchfork called the album "an archival triumph and one of the year's most thrilling new releases," putting Hall alongside historically salvaged artists whose time has belatedly arrived
- The album includes two of only three known recordings of Arthur Russell playing drums — the 22-minute diptych "Fresh Feeling" and "Special Weakness" — that Hall had transferred from two-track tapes last year after they sat unplayed since the original sessions
- The release came about when a label head, impressed with Hall's 2014 album Cool Fire, asked if he had more music; Hall shared a couple of dozen unreleased songs covering four decades and a globe-trotting life
- The label went from a planned 200-copy press run while roughly $2,000 in debt to 1,000 orders and a target of 2,000 copies within two weeks of the album's launch
- Hall's career intersected with Allen Ginsberg and Russell in the East Village's Poets' Building scene, where he played backup for Ginsberg's poetry sets and co-wrote two songs with Russell, including disco track "Go for the Night" produced by members of Arthur's Landing
- Hall is planning a covers album that would include his take on Sade's "No Ordinary Love" and will perform at New York's former Pyramid Club (now Nightclub 101) for the first time since playing there with Russell
Why it matters: The release rescues two of only three known recordings of Arthur Russell — who died of AIDS in 1992 — playing drums, tapes that sat unplayed for decades until Hall transferred them last year, materially expanding the historical record on a major experimental figure. Commercially, the label went from a planned 200-copy press while roughly $2,000 in debt to 1,000 orders and a 2,000-copy target, a concrete shift from archival obscurity to real demand.
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