Nirosta Steel; Kinsella & Pulse, LLC; Tasha's Hideous Laughter

Nirosta Steel ‘My Skyscraper’ represents 40 years or so of works, re-works and works-forever-in-progress of one Steven Hall, aka Nirosta Steel — son of Scotland; step-son of the United States of America; adopted Daddy of Taiwan; Five-Star General in the Buddhist Army; legendary horndog stickman (we have pics!); friend, neighbor, collaborator and co-conspirator of Arthur Russell; and one of the most jawdroppingly sincere songwriting voices you’ll hear in this wretched modern era. Sure, that’s a metric fuck-ton of descriptors for a single person. But it's sorta impossible to capture the full scope of this human being named Steven Hall. ‘My Skyscraper’ doesn’t really even scratch at the surface of his output. And plenty of material is already out there — a devastating 1999 live [but not exactly your standard live recording] called ‘Cool Fire’; an EP produced with Russell called ‘Foxy Pup’; all his work with the storied outfit Arthur’s Landing, a not-quite-tribute group formed to carry Russell’s torch; and quite a load more. But it’s always a rare and specific constellation of ideas and motifs: queer love songs — night life, giddy desire and odes to lovers of yesterday. There’s the anti-vibrato ethos he shared with Russell always present in the vocal stretches and horn performances. Sexy AF window-buffet disco. Cloudfolk earlobe-lick confessionals. Post-rave sauna-wave. We culled ‘My Skyscraper’ from a few hours-worth of longform mixes Hall sent to us last year. Right away, we noted he also shares with Russell a forever-sculpting approach to songcraft. A folk version of a song here; clubbed out disco version of that same one over there. An absolutely maniacal organizational process that had us triple-checking our metadata. No, we've never met a dada quite like Hall. A True Scotch-American wildass. Kinsella & Pulse, LLC is Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse. Though faithful to the legacy of left-field pop, Kinsella & Pulse, LLC consistently add just the right amount of knotty tension and dubwise dissonance to what are essentially alternate reality chart-toppers. Tasha’s Hideous Laughter is Cocojoey and Mukqs.