Nirosta Steel, aka Steven Hall, is having one of the most incredible years in his musical life, and that’s saying something for a pop outsider whose creative path has taken him around the world and intersected with the likes of Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Don Cherry and Arthur Russell.
Nirosta Steel’s recently released double album, My Skyscraper, not quite a reissue but not an entirely new album either, became an unlikely hit with a new generation of young fans drawn in by its adventurous, intimate, genre-curious dance music. Hall, now based south of Chicago in Champaign-Urbana, wondered, “What do you do if you’re a pop star at 69?” First off, he was able to quit driving for Uber.
Since Skyscraper took off, Hall has been a whirlwind of activity: interviewed by The Guardian, a pair of headlining shows at New York’s Pyramid Club, and plans for more recording and touring afoot. As part of this wave, Nirosta Steel plays Orlando Monday, for reasons that are just as unlikely and yet heartwarming as so much in his life currently is. Orlando Weekly sat down with Hall for a freewheeling conversation about it all. “My husband calls me Mr. Tangent,” he warns us.
It’s all true. Hall is eschewing Miami, Gainesville and Tampa stages in favor of Orlando, specifically Will’s Pub. The reason is simple and heartfelt: He wants his 104-year-old mother — a self-confessed Madonna fan comfortably ensconced in Waterford Lakes — to be able to see and hear him play this new music that’s seemingly taken the world by storm.
“She’s been my biggest fan all my life, and she supported me for many years just so that I could do music. So this is my way of showing her the fruits of her labor,” he says.
As befits a restless creative spirit who has lived around the world — Glasgow, Boulder, New York, Hong Kong — he has left a trail of creative work in Orlando. The hints he drops are tantalizing: a demo written here called “Christmas in Florida”; the Skyscraper track “First Love,” recorded at his brother’s Orlando home; work done with Michael “Q-Burns Abstract Message” Donaldson; even a long-ago gig at the SpaceBar.
“[The song] ‘Lost in Music’ starts off with something about my experience in Bradenton, where I learned about the ‘stingray shuffle.’ When you’re going into the water, you have to shuffle your feet to disturb the stingers,” he tells OW. “I was joking with the band that we were going to do like Morris Day and the Time when they all start dancing in unison, but we didn’t have enough time to rehearse it for the show in New York. I just did it myself, and the crowd loved it — I like making a fool of myself.”
The reason behind all of this — the Will’s Pub show, our conversation, Hall living his best pop-star life — is My Skyscraper. Out this summer through the label Ulyssa, everything about it is audacious, off-kilter and striking. For starters, it’s a maximal double LP (“Who’s going to buy a double album?” Hall wondered). The cover image is a striking picture of a young Hall staring at the camera like a sweaty hybrid of Iggy Pop and David Byrne, and the music within is a dreamlike genre collage of disco, synth-punk, soul-pop, devotional music and funk. The past blends into the future on an infinite sonic horizon, with music from 1984 through 2025 assembled and reassembled.
There’s a song for seemingly every mood on an album that ranges from scratchy Lou Reed-ian urgency to wide-eyed lo-fi soul. But where My Skyscraper truly wins is in a carefree playfulness that pervades the entire album.
“A sense of playfulness is really important because that includes being very open to taking chances and making mistakes,” Hall says.
Soon after the album dropped in June and Hall held the finished product in his hands, he got an inkling that his life was about to change dramatically.
“It didn’t really hit me until I got to New York, and not only was asked to sign some of the albums, but also to sign someone’s iPhone,” he marvels. “It feels like I’m in a movie about myself, like I’m playing myself in a movie.”
Despite the recent seismic shifts in Hall’s life, this is not the only part of his life worthy of being captured on celluloid. Taken as a whole, his entire journey seems fantastical, full of chance meetings, far-off places and music — from studying with Ginsberg, Burroughs and Don Cherry at Naropa University to taking in the scene at the mythical Poets’ Building in New York, where he might run into Richard Hell or Bob Dylan. And of course, there’s his very long friendship and creative partnership with Arthur Russell, the innovative composer, producer and musician.
“The word I’m using lately for music people who do music together is ‘fellowship,’” says Hall. “Our friendship evolved into a very deep fellowship.”
This fellowship would result in beautiful work from both Russell and Nirosta Steel. Hall sings on Russell’s “A Little Lost” and “My Tiger, My Timing,” while the posthumous Russell album Love Is Overtaking Me started out from collaborations between the two. After Russell’s passing in 1992, Hall would pay tribute to his friend in Arthur’s Landing, a tribute act formed by friends and former Russell accomplices to honor his work. Russell’s drumming even features on two tracks on My Skyscraper. The presence of Arthur Russell never seems far from Hall, whether it be on record, in snatches of memory, or moments of synchronicity and serendipity.
“We were performing together in places downtown, including the Pyramid Club, now Club 101, where I just performed in New York,” says Hall. “It all comes around in this very fancy, convenient circle.”
Become a part of Nirosta Steel’s ever-expanding circle Monday at Will’s. Fast Preacher opens, making the night even more of a party.
7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 5, Will’s Pub, 1042 N. Mills Ave., willspub.org, $16.89.
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This article appears in Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2026.