{"id":308367,"date":"2026-07-29T05:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T05:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/308367\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T05:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T05:39:11","slug":"no-plan-no-budget-no-promotion-how-a-genre-mashing-masterpiece-by-a-forgotten-new-york-beatnik-blew-gen-z-away-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/308367\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No plan, no budget, no promotion\u2019: how a genre-mashing masterpiece by a forgotten New York beatnik blew Gen Z away | Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018It\u2019s kind of mind-bending,\u201d says 69-year old Steven Hall. For the last three years, the Scottish musician has been living with his lawyer husband a few hours south of Chicago, driving an Uber for some additional income. Now, suddenly, he is being lauded by critics for his double LP My Skyscraper, released last month under the name Nirosta Steel. Compiling material recorded between 1984 and 2025, it charts a sonic landscape through disco, folk and synth-pop with detours into Chinese opera and ecclesiastical a cappella. Pitchfork called it<\/a> \u201can archival triumph and one of the year\u2019s most thrilling new releases\u201d.<\/p>\n

It all came about when a label head, impressed with Nirosta Steel\u2019s 2014 album Cool Fire, asked Hall if he had any more music. \u201cHe didn\u2019t know what he was in for,\u201d says Hall. The couple of dozen unreleased songs he shared spanned four decades of eclectic musicianship, and revealed a globe-trotting life and career that intersects with experimental icons such as Arthur Russell and Allen Ginsberg. Now My Skyscraper seems poised to admit Hall into that rarified pantheon of historically salvaged artists whose time has belatedly arrived.<\/p>\n

double quotation mark\u2018I thought Bob Dylan coming over in his limo was normal\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like Rip Van Winkle! Like I suddenly walked out of a cave and I\u2019m blinking my eyes and there\u2019s all this bright light shining on me,\u201d says Hall. \u201cTwo weeks ago the label was maybe $2,000 in debt because we were going to do 200 copies. Now we have 1,000 orders and are looking to press 2,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poets corner \u2026 Hall in 1977 photographed by Allen Ginsberg. Photograph: Courtesy of the estate of Allen Ginsberg<\/p>\n

Born in the Glasgow suburb of Milngavie to a middle-class optician father and a \u201ctough as nails\u201d mother from a family of 18, Hall grew up performing in the church choir and local theatre company. His parents sent him to a teacher to rid him of his accent, accounting for a rather unplaceable accent (\u201csome people think I\u2019m Swedish\u201d), but they were much more lax as his sexuality developed, and the young Hall freely dated boys and girls throughout school. \u201cThere was never even the idea of coming out,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause I came from a very liberal background where my parents\u2019 attitude was, \u2018Whatever you want to do, it\u2019s OK.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After his father died, Hall\u2019s mother posted a personal ad in the International Herald Tribune and consulted with her three children (Hall has a twin sister and a brother) as to which suitor she should pursue. A man in Delaware won out and the family relocated to the US, which had long dazzled Hall thanks to his fascination with American musicals (\u201cespecially the real fantasy, Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney, \u2018let\u2019s put on a show\u2019 classics\u201d) and the Chrysler Building, which was built from a stainless alloy called \u2026 Nirosta steel.<\/p>\n

Hall today. Photograph: Claire Daly\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Poets \u2013 including Ginsberg \u2013 would visit his high school in Delaware, and Hall would join them on their return trips to New York City, which is how he found himself at the so-called Poets\u2019 Building in the middle of the East Village\u2019s then bustling arts scene. \u201cI thought it was normal,\u201d says Hall, \u201cbecause it was the only thing I knew. \u2018Oh, Bob Dylan\u2019s coming over, his limousine is parked downstairs. Richard Hell<\/a> from Television has a show tonight.\u2019 I thought I could be doing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He briefly followed Ginsberg to Naropa University, where he studied dance and poetry under Douglas Dunn and William S Burroughs. But it was while visiting Ginsberg in the Poets\u2019 Building that Hall met Arthur Russell, and the two developed a deep friendship and collaboration while playing backup for Ginsberg\u2019s poetry sets. Russell, he says, was one of the few people who \u201cjust couldn\u2019t help creating all the time, and it was hardly a conscious thing. His genius was totally organic and came from his Buddhist awakening. People credit Ginsberg with bringing Buddhism to the west, but Arthur was, in some ways, teaching Allen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We didn\u2019t stop and we didn\u2019t go back\u2019 \u2026 Hall in 1983 with friend, producer and cellist Arthur Russell. Photograph: Jonny Fu<\/p>\n

Hall and Russell collaborated on several projects, including the disco outfit Loose Joints with the DJ Steve D\u2019Acquisto. One of only two songs they wrote together, the sweltering Go for the Night, appears on My Skyscraper, with production by members of Arthur\u2019s Landing, a sort-of tribute band assembled by members of their circle after Russell\u2019s death from Aids in 1992. Their other co-write, a lo-fi elegy titled Lost in Thought, was meant to feature on the album but was bumped in favour of the 22-minute diptych Fresh Feeling and Special Weakness \u2013 two of only three recordings of Russell, a gifted multi-instrumentalist, playing drums.<\/p>\n

Those last-minute additions survived somewhat miraculously, given Hall \u201chad just had them transferred last year, after having them on two-track [tapes] for all those years. I was lucky they were still usable because they were never played, I think, since they were recorded.\u201d More than that, the tracks were improvised one-takes: \u201cOnce we got going, the idea was we don\u2019t stop, and we don\u2019t go back and do it again. Everything I did, Arthur was right on top of it. That shows not only how talented he was, but also how close we were, because we could have that kind of interaction and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond their collaborations, the two would find inspiration on joint journeys to now legendary nightclubs such as Danceteria and The Saint. One of their favourite pastimes, Hall says, was getting high and looking at guys in their diverse East Village, with a preference for its Ukrainian runners and Puerto Ricans \u201cwho didn\u2019t like to wear underwear when they wore sweatpants\u201d. With a naughty chuckle, he relates that, when a well-endowed man approached, \u201cwe would nudge each other and say, \u2018entering binocular mode.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall admits his relationship with Russell sometimes suffered from their clash of competitiveness, and what he viewed as his friend\u2019s jealous streak. In the book Travels Over Feeling<\/a>, Hall reveals that he was seconds from signing to Russell\u2019s Sleeping Bag Records label when Russell grabbed the pen from his hand, claiming he would become too famous and move on. \u201cArthur had a saying, \u2018Sometimes paranoia is justified,\u2019\u201d Hall explains. \u201cAt that time, he thought some of the people at Sire Records, some of the sleazy people he was hanging out with and playing demos for, had taken some of his ideas, which is entirely possible.\u201d Hall says Russell believed the Rolling Stones\u2019 song Miss You, for example, was based on one of his drum tracks \u2013 though \u201cthere was not really any evidence of that, but that was the kind of thing\u201d.<\/p>\n

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double quotation markBoss Trix (Benny\u2019s Song) is inspired by a Taiwanese lover with impressive bedroom skills<\/p>\n

In his 20s, Hall began spending substantial amounts of time in East Asia, initially staying with a wealthy boyfriend in Hong Kong. He began scoring performances and hosting movement workshops for Zuni Icosahedron, an experimental theatre company there, and later \u201cmade a really good living\u201d recording location sound for film and television ads in Taiwan. Naturally, he picked up inspiration each step of the way. My Skyscraper track Lost in Music concludes with audio from a Cantonese funeral procession, and Boss Trix (Benny\u2019s Song) is inspired by a Taiwanese lover with impressive bedroom skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been collecting all these songs for ever, basically, and it\u2019s not just collecting,\u201d he says. \u201cA song that was written 30 years ago, or something I did with Arthur 40 years ago, I keep doing them in different ways so I don\u2019t get bored, or it\u2019s different versions of songs I\u2019ve done with other people in other languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph: Claire Daly\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

With the album\u2019s success, and with momentous live engagements on the horizon including his first performance at New York\u2019s former Pyramid Club (now Nightclub 101) since he played there with Russell, Hall hopes to reignite his writing with new collaborators, and says he\u2019d like to do a covers album that includes his take on Sade\u2019s No Ordinary Love, originally intended for My Skyscraper.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like surfing on a wave and just seeing where it goes,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was no plan or budget for promotion, it was just the music we wanted to put out.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for finding renewed success at such a late stage in his career, Hall remains unfazed. \u201cI really admire older musicians, like Madonna, who\u2019s two years younger than me, or Mick Jagger, who\u2019s a lot older,\u201d he says. \u201cCertain musicians just keep finding ways to approach it. There\u2019s an authenticity in terms of the process, because everyone was just doing it because they wanted to. And that\u2019s what my music is like, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Skyscraper by Nirosta Steel is out now on Ulyssa Records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s kind of mind-bending,\u201d says 69-year old Steven Hall. For the last three years, the Scottish musician has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-308367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}