Nirosta Steel - MY SKYSCRAPER - glittering lost treasure dance pop, arthur russell-adjacent, needs its own thread

out of nowhere a "lost treasure" kind of release and one of the brightest i've ever heard. weightless queer joy as fgti and ivy point out on the arthur russell thread. i think this release and mr. steel deserve their own thread.

https://ulyssa.bandcamp.com/album/my-skyscraper

Adore this - there's a delightful August-Darnell-but-sloppy vibe running through this.

I love the casual asides and improv quips sprinkled throughout, when I listen again I will note some faves

this EP is really great too:

https://buddhistarmy.bandcamp.com/album/foxy-pup

and this collection of 80s/90s tracks
https://buddhistarmy.bandcamp.com/album/dry-ice

Truly exceptional. Lots of mystery/intrigue/courage I find missing from much left field pop at the moment. 100% addicted.

Real dereliction of duty that Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed this yet.

A 40 min version of this record would be truly tip top.

So smitten with this totally weird and beautiful record

when I listen again I will note some faves

- wacky falsetto on "YHEMA" and the line "you have eaten my sister" lol wtf

- "you think you're so funky, I can smell you from here"

- "I got news for you, you're not that cool.... well maybe"

- "we got a million DJs, young and sporty guys"

I also wanna note that Peter Zummo's trombone is absolutely exquisite on these tracks

great interview with joshua minsoo kim

https://toneglow.substack.com/p/tone-glow-231-nirosta-steel

thanks

The other big influence was Al Green, his album Belle (1977). It was produced in his home, and he’s playing acoustic guitar on that and it’s the most amazing guitar playing.

OK I gotta hear this

Love this album.

I was expecting the Russell similarities production/arrangement wise, but the resemblance in vocal approach can be truly startling at times.

I expected the usual suspects here.

I like this album a lot.

YHEMA is still slaying me. The growly fake Muppet voice doing call and response vocals!

we got the Isley Brothers on the CD player (young giiiiiirls)
we got Marvin Gaye on the CD player (woo!)
we got George Jones on the CD player (ahhhhhhh)

yessss

Oh my god, 'Yhema'. Incredible.

it really is, that's the one that gets stuck in my head

A 40 min version of this record would be truly tip top.

― mr.raffles

Yes, agreed. If you trim the fat and cut down to 12-ish tracks instead of 17 it becomes perfect.

"my name is night" is like, impossibly sexy. cot damn

Yes, agreed. If you trim the fat and cut down to 12-ish tracks instead of 17 it becomes perfect.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, July 13, 2026 2:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

sounds like youre more a fan of sequencing and curation

some of this is utterly brilliant and some of this is a bore, which has also generally been my experience with arthur russell

NYC look who is DJing on the two nights:

Nirosta Steel returns to NYC for two nights only this September, Pleasure Systems opens one. buy your tickets https://t.co/UNuFQXIaJ4 pic.twitter.com/siXvLYhDlR

— Clarke (@pleasuresystems) July 15, 2026

i wanted to go but instantly sold out ofc

The Tonearm with the business:

https://www.thetonearm.com/i-still-miss-someone-the-boys-of-nirosta-steel/

Cool to learn that he (like Jim Jarmusch and Lucy Sante) was a student of Kenneth Koch.

great interview!

get ur new date 9/12 tix now, just copped mine

sold out :((

Show up and say you're the handpicked opening act. (You needn't say whose hand, though of course it's ours.)

when he sings "if you could see the world in your eyes / you'd never cry again" i realize it's one of the best songs i've heard

Nirosta Steel interview in The Guardian

‘No plan, no budget, no promotion’: how a genre-mashing masterpiece by a forgotten New York beatnik blew gen Z away
How did an album that began life in 1984 – fusing disco, folk, synth-pop and Chinese opera – end up as ‘one of 2026’s most thrilling releases’? And why does its creator call himself Nirosta Steel?
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/jul/29/my-skyscraper-nirosta-steel-new-york-beatnik

beautiful record

length works for me

this is a funny album -- hard to remember a song in recent history that kills the momentum of an album quite like "yhema". that being said, i also think this album really obliterates the argument made a few times in this thread about how it could have been shorter / could have been an EP etc. always kind of a flaccid argument in general to me but w/ this album in particular, the id of it all is so important that to take out the "bad"/demo-y type records would be to start removing pieces of this album's soul. like, if i took the perspective of an olympic judge or something i would say that this album prob has more skips than i would attribute to other pitchfork 9.0 type albums, but i'm also far more on the side of "this is a 9.0" than i am "this could be a 40 min album." it just feels so bloodless to listen to this album & understand it contextually and then render that judgement

totally agree (and I LOVE Yhema lol)

I played "Yhema" at the office last month and my colleague next door was all, "WHAT are you listening to?!"

lol both times I have played this album with my wife in the room, she has given me a look during "yhema"

Yeah, it does go on. Similarly I’m not a big fan of Mohan (Mandarin Version).

I haven’t listened to this yet, it’s in the queue for this week ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Is something up?

https://toneglow.substack.com/p/tone-glow-is-cancelling-its-upcoming

Steel's own post on it says they're trying to reschedule for January. Might just be that.

so who wants to take this one? it involves terms i don't understand and cannot explain

Feel free to Google them and the FBI might explain

from what i can gather it's been alleged he was following accounts posting ai-generated child abuse on one of his social media accounts

Talk about a rapid fall from grace...

even before all of this if you read any of the subsequent interviews with him it seemed pretty clear that he was, um, an imperfect avatar for late career stardom

While I understand the cancellation, it is notable that it was also marked by vile homophobia— many responses to the news were like “Older gay white guy? of course he’s a pedo” which is, like, wtf yall

table otm

even before all of this if you read any of the subsequent interviews with him it seemed pretty clear that he was, um, an imperfect avatar for late career stardom

Read a couple posted itt and the guy is either Zelig or the all time greatest bullshitter of all time. One thing that leapt out at me was when he said Scotland was liberal - is this the same Scotland that didn't decriminalize homosexuality till 1981?

I thought Tone Glow's email on this was very telling when it was first sent out. It wasn't "we are sorry to announce this and hopefully can reschedule" in their usual warm, amiable tone. It was "not happening and you'll get a refund."

the Tone Glow interview he casually mentioned being the editor of the Columbia Review, that was one that stuck out to me

I only read that interview this afternoon and he also mentioned making a non-consensual recording of someone having sex, yikes

"I didn’t really get wild until I was older. I was in Bangkok for a while, and things got really wild there"

Did something apart from AI boys happen that makes us skeptical of his biography?

An interview with NY poet Mark Statman corroborates that somebody by that name was editor of the Columbia Review around the right time. He also appears in a scene in Eileen Myles' Inferno.

https://i.ibb.co/PvmsQ9zW/2026-09-03-09-23-55.png

He certainly seems to have led an extremely full and varied life!

one figure i have thought about in relation to Nirosta Steel and the recent allegations is Sleazy— like, it never seemed like a secret to me that the guy relocated to Thailand for some very particular (ahem) reasons. Of course, Sleazy was a much bigger and more culturally significant figure than Nirosta Steel, but I still wonder whether he would have been cancelled if he has lived into the real social media age, and my guess is yeah. That isn’t a value judgment, fwiw, but speculation

Yeah, I was thinking about him earlier.

Eric from Ulyssa asked me to lie multiple times about why I was cancelling the Nirosta Steel shows. He told me to lie to help his bottom line. He then called me a p*ssy on Twitter yesterday before deleting it. Classic industry scumbag. Former Director of A&R at Secretly Group.

— Joshua Minsoo Kim (@misterminsoo) September 3, 2026

The statement I made yesterday remains as is. I'm not trying to be sued. It should be made clear that one very big reason I wanted to cancel was because after talking with Eric, he kept asking me to lie. "It's our only record in the black, I don't usually endorse lying but..."

— Joshua Minsoo Kim (@misterminsoo) September 3, 2026

xp I know someone who moved in those circles for a while (and subsequently removed themselves precisely because of this issue) and apparently sleazy's behaviour was very much an open secret amongst his friends and something they would joke about. He was called sleazy for a reason.

whoa, no idea Josh Kim was involved.

one figure i have thought about in relation to Nirosta Steel and the recent allegations is Sleazy— like, it never seemed like a secret to me that the guy relocated to Thailand for some very particular (ahem) reasons. Of course, Sleazy was a much bigger and more culturally significant figure than Nirosta Steel, but I still wonder whether he would have been cancelled if he has lived into the real social media age, and my guess is yeah. That isn’t a value judgment, fwiw, but speculation

there was a wire article about sleazy before he died and he made a joke about “oh I love those boys in Thailand”

could've sworn there were some references to Sleazy's Thailand time in Cosey's autobiography.

I have a friend who worked with Sleazy on a project and noted that Sleazy had impressive data security on his computer

xxp Tone Glow had a fairly epic (and very entertaining!) interview with Hall. Kind of amazing that this is all falling apart — I do really love the record, but ...

And Sleazy mentioned his predilection in conversation …. this was the same friend who had an awkward interchange with Don Bolles who took an interest in my friend’s 15 year old daughter…

Basically Don said, “Does your daughter have any girlfriends she could invite over?”

I don't really know if I buy this explanation: https://stereogum.com/2510192/nirosta-steel-shares-statement-after-social-media-activity-raises-concerns/news

I want to give my response to some speculation swirling around on the internet recently.

A few weeks ago my husband told me people on Rednote were getting into my music, so I went on to take a look and followed a bunch of accounts quickly without paying much attention to what they posted.

I was really surprised when a friend sent me screenshots of accounts I followed. I did not realize that a few of the accounts contained highly toxic content, so I deleted my profile. Those accounts don’t reflect my interests in any way.

I understand the concern, but I can’t help thinking that ageism and homophobia are also factors in the discussion surrounding me.

I apologize to any of my fans who were upset by this misunderstanding. I need to be more careful on social media. I ask that you have a little grace for an old hippie who doesn’t know his way around the internet.

so you followed a bunch of Rednote accounts and a bunch of them just happened to be shotacon posters? sorry, I'm not on Rednote, is that kinda stuff super prevalent there or

that's not a particularly convincing explanation

that.... sounds like complete bullshit

I don’t even know what rednote is lol

I’m afraid to explore what it is

I also had no idea what shotacon was before this…

I want to believe the explanation but yeah could be total bullshit.

I mean it’s not like he’d confess if it was on purpose

i want to start a website called “Brownote” and when you go on it it emits the frequency that makes you shit yourself

According to google Rednote is a Chinese social networking site … also according to google, you do not want to look at any search results for sh0tac0n

rednote is just a normal chinese social media platform, it's vaguely comparable to pinterest and instagram iirc? it got a bit of attention last year when tiktok was banned in the us and people noticed that it was easy for foreigners to sign up for (unlike every other chinese social media platform) and so there was a bit of interesting cultural exchange with chinese users for a few months before chinese authorities cracked down on that a bit

i don't think it's at all the sort of thing where merely having an account is a red flag

agreed, especially if all these problematic follows were recent

LOL boomer.

Would find this a lot easier to believe if he hadn't done interviews talking about his orgies in Asia and recording people having sex without their permission to do so

the man behind yhema is a nonce?!

wait, what is shotacon? i don't want to google.

japanese drawn/animated child abuse material focused on boys

looking at his instagram he does seem to just follow back thousands of people so that's the one thing that makes his explanation slightly more plausible i guess but still

I guess the question to ask is do these horrible accounts also follow any other leftfield weirdo music dudes? heck do any of them actually follow NS even?

i don't think that's possible to verify given he deleted his account and i wouldn't suggest anyone try to

Yes indeed

been a rough couple of weeks on the internet for pitchfork's breakout stars of 2026 (weird old dude category) what with noncey-not-noncey beatniks and nazi-not-nazi drone metal greek orthodox priests

I repeat again, LOL boomers. What age is this guy? 69? I admit I've had a few run-ins with my older sister about some of the people whose content she reposts on Facebook.

Yeah if that’s his defense it would have been fairly easy to prove those accounts followed him instead of panicking and deleting which makes it suspicious. The tour being cancelled over a boomer being technologically impaired also seems as a harsh reaction so it makes me think there’s more to it.

There is simply no reason to give an old Thai sex tourist the benefit of the doubt.

Reminds me of the excuse of the longtime Wheel of Fortune announcer who just got fired bc a fellow passenger snapped a photo on a plane of his laptop screen while he was engaged in conversation in a pedo chatroom, through his lawyer he claimed he thought it was a suicide prevention chatroom or something.

Gen-Z giveth, and Gen-Z taketh away.

The tour wasn’t cancelled a show was canceled

It was a one show tour

He praises Chogyam Trungpa in that Toneglow interview, who (allegedly) did some pretty awful things himself.

I think this will heavily affect his chances to appear in the prestigious eoy ilm poll.