A Few Words About Liminal Horror

I’ll never forget when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and I was on contract to The RAND Corporation. Many staff members were sent home, and I stayed behind to complete my contract. Costs had to be cut since operations in-house were suspended, so all the vending machines and coffee makers were shut down. Shortly thereafter the two top floors were closed down, and those departments were sent home.

Out of morbid curiosity I went up to those floors and walked around. The lights were turned off, and previously occupied desks and offices were now abandoned, relegated to complete darkness and silence. I was possessed by the apocalyptic eeriness of my environment. (I didn’t steal anything LOL, I have religious guilt).

For the past year I’ve enjoyed the surreal horror of liminal space videos and vaporwave music, so I couldn’t resist running to the cinema to catch Backrooms and wasn’t disappointed. Backrooms is an extraordinary film, but it’s been the topping of several years of liminal space horror videos making the rounds on You Tube.

Around the same time that liminal space videos were posted a new series of videos of abandoned and decaying malls went viral, as well. Shuttered shopping malls of elephantine proportions across Middle America were explored and filmed for Tik Tok and the ubiquitous You Tube. Their cheerful video arcades and food courts were now dead like a long-abandoned corpse. The creepiness was downright surreal, and I imagine if J.G. Ballard were still alive his eyes would be glistening.

Getting back to Backrooms, several of the Backrooms series videos date as far back as 2022, some even in 2021. These dates struck me as significant in that this was the era of COVID-19 enforced lockdown. Liminal space horror was created to show a desolate world evacuated by a biological pandemic. You can almost make a case that these horror videos pose political commentary on the destruction of commercialism by social neglect.

I’ll decline from discussing the film, I’ll just recommend that you see it, especially if you like brain twisting surrealism from artists like M.C. Escher or Rene Magritte. I'd also like to point out that liminal space as a horror device in the cinema has its precedents, especially in the films of Antonioni, ie. the park in Blow Up, the last ten minutes in L'Eclisse, and parts of Red Desert.

Leyland Kirby · 11 - Isolated lights

I also recommend that you check out the Poolrooms videos, which are similar to Backrooms, but you’re stuck in an indoor swimming pool world, complete with fifty-foot-tall rubber duckies, gigantic Greco-Roman statues and endless towers constructed of bleached white tile. Aquaphobes need not apply.

I’ll also drop recommendations for Vaporwave music, which provide the soundtrack for both Backrooms and Poolrooms videos. It can either emulate innocuous shopping mall muzak, or provide dark ambient sounds, like Brian Eno’s Music for Airports series with a more sinister edge.

My favorite Dark Ambient artist is Leyland Kirby aka The Caretaker, and assorted labels Geometric Lullaby and Dreamcorp Records Inc. on Bandcamp are dedicated to this wild genre of music. Admittedly, everything listed here is an acquired taste, not for everyone, but if you like your surrealism on a horrorshow level, you’ve come to the right place.

Oldboy - New Poetry Album OUT NOW!

Spring is here, and a young man’s fancy turns to poetry, indie poetry, punk poetry slam, darkwave poetry, a dying rose by any other name and all that. Two years after my last audiobook I’m here with the new opus, Oldboy. And as Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton) defiantly sneers, “What are you waiting for? A spectacle? You shall have it!!!” So polish up your spectacles, Andy Seven Ltd. has returned.

Oldboy is my fourth audiobook of poetry, fifteen prose poems that up the ante from previous efforts. While past audiobooks featured poems with more traditional soundscapes, the new work features dark ambient, industrial neofolk mixes and drum and bass rhythm tracks.

All music mixes aside, Oldboy is a wild mosaic of sonnets dedicated to horror films (Sadako, Succubus), Robert Williams-inspired sports sleaze (Demolition Derby, Bantamweight Vs. Flyweight), and a triptych of Southern California gothic (Bougainvillea, California Boyfriend, The LA River).

The title, aside from the movie, comes from my theory that some males are men from the day they were born and always remain men, while others will always be boys, even when they’re pushing their Seventies. Some boys always inhabit an adult form. The same goes for females. Some women will always be young girls no matter how old they age.

Making the transition from punk singing to poetry recital wasn’t a Herculean task. When I sang with my band Trash Can School the most common remark I heard was that my vocals were “monotonous”. Whether I was aware of it or not, the monotony of my vocals probably meant that I chose to recite my lyrics as poetry.

I could make a case for it by saying that singing was never the objective but just reciting my prose. So, in a very loose sense I’ve always performed poetry recitals back in the days of my band and I’ve continued to this day.

Islington High Street was about my all-nighter at Islington Screen on The Green spent fifty years ago watching The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and other future superstars like Billy Idol and Siouxsie Sioux. Slumgullion is a piss-take on Willy the Shake’s classic plays, some of my favorites. I love the surrealism of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Saints and Sinners was about a real saloon in the heart of sleepy Culver City. Transfigured Night is my surreal take on a dream where I walked through a forest accompanied by mutilated lab test animals. The dream world continues with Succubus, nocturnal eroticism let loose upon the bedroom walls.

Those expecting sermons from the mount taking a political stand will be disappointed, as the only track that shows a political angle at all would be Carrot in The Donkey’s Eye, which criticizes the punishing exploitation of the average worker, the most offensive culprit being factory and warehouse environments. I suppose Smog lies somewhere in social commentary, too.

While I’m on the subject of poetry, what are your favorite movies about poets? We don’t get a lot of cinema space, I see movies about Bukowski, Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, but I’d like to see a film about Anne Sexton or Rod McKuen. Rod McKuen was an awful poet but his life story is utterly fascinating.

My favorite movie about a poet is Orpheus by Jean Cocteau about a popular poet despised by the hipster cognoscenti because his work is too successful. His best friend is a poet so jaded with writing that his next book will be a volume of nothing but empty pages. Doesn't get more existential than that!

But back to Oldboy, ahem: Some poems have been published in the past, i.e. Bantamweight Vs. Flyweight, Succubus, and California Boyfriend were featured in Horror Sleaze Trash. Other poems like Slumgullion, Transfigured Night, and Sadako were included in several Dawn of Darkness witch house compilations, available for listening at The Internet Archive.

Oldboy can be streamed on You Tube, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Amazon Music, or Deezer. Hard media CDs can be purchased at Bandcamp. I’ll merch a few on eBay, too. Friends, Hollywood Babylonians, and countrymen, lend me your ears.

Sea Level Drive Spoken Word Album Available Now

Halloween 2022 marks the release of my second album Sea Level Drive. A definite labor of love, it’s my continued foray into spoken word recordings with soundscapes created by me and helped with by my two friends, Sad Boy and Robodyke.

Tracks from Sea Level Drive can be listened to on HearNow (andysevenltd.hearnow.com) and a few will remain on SoundCloud (Soundcloud.com/andysevenltd), too.

Not only do you get to hear me read my own poetry but I also read two pieces by the legendary Maxwell Bodenheim, Death and The Ballad of Jack Rose. Let’s go straight to the beginning and talk about the album:

Sea Level Drive begins with Ghosts of Hustlers, an abandoned gay horror novel I started years ago about a young man moving into an apartment off the Sunset Strip where his evenings are haunted by ghosts of murdered young runaways. It wasn’t bad but concepts are hard to sustain over 160 pages. I made it a poem instead. That wah-wah sound you hear is a trumpet, not a guitar. Too much!

Velvet Candybar comes next and I went for a sweet English melody while chanting about making love in a graveyard. The goth boy can’t help it!

The Hardcore Kid is my poem about the hooligan who refuses to give up the hardcore ghost long after the riot’s ended. “He tied a rag around his boot, spare changes for his loot, still lamenting the dead of Sid, he’s The Hardcore Kid.” The legendary 1-2-3-4 countdown runs the gamut from Johnny Thunders, Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, and Sir Paul McCartney.

Disc Over America (DOA) is a political song about murder in the name of church and state. This country feels more and more like a drug store that’s quickly going out of business.

Sea Level Drive finishes the first half of the album. It’s a small road on the extreme end of Malibu right after you pass Zuma and before you enter Ventura County. You could say it’s technically the very end of Malibu. It’s right by Lechuza Beach, which might be the narrowest beach in Malibu. It’s a poem about a couple strung out on drugs who have nothing but the ocean singing for them at night.

The second half of the album begins with Teethgrinder, a poem about the tension, anger and anxiety pouring out on the internet from all sides. People are angrier than ever, exhibiting not a single note of sensitivity or sympathy for each other. Savaging one another for the sake of winning a worthless argument, and most arguments are worthless in the long run. Everybody’s wrong.

The Ballad of Jack Rose by Maxwell Bodenheim features my Ibanez electric mandolin with a strong delay on my voice. It’s a pretty intense poem about a drug dealer who falls in love with an addict’s sister. This poem reminded me of The Panic In Needle Park and some Hubert Selby prose, too.

All The Madwomen is based on the Sam Fuller film Shock Corridor, specifically the scene where Peter Breck wanders into the nympho ward of the insane asylum he’s committed in. Naturally there are soundbites from the film floating all through the track. The original poem appeared in Horror Sleaze Trash Quarterly.

Sometimes people ask me why there's no guitar on my records, and it's like this: once I saw Allen Ginsberg on a TV show reciting his poetry backed by a punk band, and in theory it should have been awesome, but it was horrible. Poor old Ginsberg read his poetry with all his heart and this band behind him were playing so loud, especially this douchebag guitarist cranked so loud like he was Shitface Ramone and ripping out a solo while Grandpa Beat was trying valiantly to have his prose heard. A real shitshow, but lessons learned. Leave the fucking guitar in the corner, preferably in the garbage bin.

In Bed With The Bomb is about the early days of the atomic bomb, its development and testing. “I’m in bed with the bomb, I’m about to kingdom come, Drop it now! Stop it, how? Duck and cover, my atomic lover”. I enjoyed adding the “Andy, are you okay?” soundbite from Happiness.

Oh, My Love Is Like A Rose is a small abstract piano frisson with some sped-up saxophone and trumpet tracks for the Frank Zappa fans. That sound never gets old.

Death by Maxwell Bodenheim is the first Bodenheim poem I ever read, and I was immediately hooked. Goth to the max with its reference to Death’s longing for me and silver braids of hair, well...I laid down some backwards synthesizer for extra death texture. I also made a video of it, which you can see here.

So that’s my new album, Sea Level Drive. Give it a listen on Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music or your favorite streaming sevice. If you’re going to listen to poetry/spoken word give it some electronic skronk with some free jazz horns and some lovely mandolin-driven folk to boot.

The tracks:
Ghosts of Hustlers
Velvet Candybar
The Hardcore Kid
On Her Bed of Roses
Disc Over America (DOA)
Sea Level Drive
Teethgrinder
The Ballad of Jack Rose
All The Madwomen
In Bed With The Bomb
Oh My Love Is Like A Rose
Death

Sea Level Drive is available for download or CD format via Bandcamp.com at https://andysevenltd.bandcamp.com/album/sea-level-drive. Meet me there.

Minstrels Anonymous Spoken Word Album Available Now on Bandcamp

Today marks the release of my first full-length spoken word CD, Minstrels Anonymous. Tracks can be bought individually for download, or it can be purchased as a CD On Demand. There will be no vinyl or cassette releases (I can't believe people are making and buying cassettes again, but whatever!).

Minstrels Anonymous is my first solo album after several decades of making noise in the trashed-out back alleys of Hollywood. Years spent haunting clubs like The Masque, The Roxy Theater, The Gaslight, The Shamrock, The Hollywood Palladium, The Whiskey A Go-Go, and a million dead ballrooms.

After years of playing ear-splitting noise punk I've settled down to playing neofolk music on my mandolin and free jazz on my pocket trumpet and tenor saxophone. Neofolk is folk music with heavy goth and industrial influences, artists like Death In June, Emily Jane White and David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower and now Wovenhand, just to name a few.

What prompted a writer who swore off a music career into making a spoken word record? When the pandemic hit and I went into lockdown I released a long-shelved novel, Red Coffee, and then proceeded to work on my poetry compilation, Year Of The Bat.

After editing, re-editing and rewriting Year of The Bat to my satisfaction I sent it off to the DIY publishing house for formatting. What they sent back was a nightmare.

It looked like a drunk five-year old got ahold of the manuscript and formatted the whole thing. Titles in tiny font running into the opening lines of the poem, pages not aligned properly, fonts changing up and down for no rhyme or reason - and not bad enough to even be deemed avant garde, for Christ's sake! It was like they hated the whole project and threw it back in my face.

After a week of nagging me constantly DO YOU APPROVE? PLEASE APPROVE? and then the annoying TELL US HOW WE DID begging, I sent back a message saying KILL IT and I WANT A REFUND.

Instead of crying in my beer about the savaging of my poetry book, I sat in front of my synthesizer. Then I played with my drum machine. Then I turned on my mp3 player in dictation mode and started reading these very same poems. I've since bought a Tascam 4-track recorder, but the earlier recordings have a weird metallic vocal sound to them. That's the mp3 player.

The first recording was Hollywood Is Killing Me, which I posted on SoundCloud. Ideas for new recordings started pouring out of my brain like a leaky faucet. I made the most of my lockdown by staying in and recording constantly, until the album you're holding represents the majority of my aural output for 2020.

As spoken word artists go, my main influences are monologists like Joe Frank, Ken Nordine, Lord Buckley, and the great Gary McFarlane. The Kenneth Patchen album with the Canadian Jazz Quartet was also a major influence on my album.

I made every effort to make each and every track sound unique and separate from each other to avoid any kind of monotony, which can often mar many spoken word recordings. Some tracks have folk backing. whereas others are heavily influenced by early Seventies electronic artists like Ruth White, Delia Derbyshire's White Noise, and Jean-Jacques Perrey.

Track listing:

1. PKW
2. Hollywood Is Killing Me
3. Stainless Steel Trees
4. Disney Superstar
5. The Scenester
6. Tomboys
7. Nerdy Girl
8. Rorer 714
9. Power Trio
10. Dreams That Money Can Buy
11. Action Painter
12. Suburban Adam & Eve
13. Halloween Birthday

Minstrels Anonymous is available for download or CD format via Bandcamp.com. You can find it at: https://andysevenltd.bandcamp.com/album/minstrels-anonymous

Newer tracks can be heard at: Soundcloud.com/andysevenltd

The Andy Seven 2020 Halftime Progress Report

There have been no idle hands at work during the pandemic, and I daresay this may be one of the most fertile periods of creativity I’ve ever had. I have a lot of new things to report, so much stuff I don’t even know where to begin, so let’s take it from the top:

1.

I put up an Author Page on Book Baby’s website for your review. It has links to all of my current books on sale, and also includes news about any upcoming releases. Here’s the link with a small screen capture, too:
https://store.bookbaby.com/bookshop/profile/index.aspx?profileURL=andyseven

2.

Check out a great poem I wrote called “Succubus” for Horror Sleaze Trash Quarterly, Spring 2020 Edition. It’s a sexy horror poem influenced by the films of Jean Rollin/Jess Franco. You can download a copy of it and read it here:
https://horrorsleazetrashcom.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/hstq-spring-2020_ebook-1.pdf

3.

All of my novels are now available for library-style lending from Hoopla.com. All you need is a library card and it’s absolutely free. Hoopla also has hundreds of CDs and DVDs you can take out, too. Here’s the link for Hoopla.com:
https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?page=1&q=andy+seven&scope=EBOOK&type=direct

4.

On a non-literary note I’ve posted a few obscure Trash Can School tracks and Cockfight remixes on my Soundcloud page, and once again, it’s absolutely free! If you have a Soundcloud account, please add Andy Seven Ltd. as a favorite artist. Here’s the link:
https://soundcloud.com/andysevenltd

5.

And last, but certainly not least, I have a new novel on the pipeline titled Red Coffee, due for an early June release date. My first book in four flaming years! If the title sounds familiar it’s because it was serialized in this blog many years ago and will finally see the light of day as a full-fledged work. Here’s a sneak peek at the cover:

In closing I wanted to mention that all excerpts and chapters from my novels have been taken down from this blog and will no longer be available for reading. If you want to enjoy them from this point on, you can either take the entire book out on Hoopla.com, or better yet, buy the whole thing on Amazon Kindle, iTunes, Book Baby, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo in Canada, or Oyster (if they’re still in business).

I have some new projects planned for later this year, i.e. another book in October 2020, more poetry in a wonderful comp titled Will To Flutter, and my first new music in years for sale on Bandcamp. The future looks bright, virus be damned.