The Talking Hours; Transmissions To Missy, "Stop The Sound" - Broadcasting To ALL
Stringer's Cheap Gas, Thin Air debuts the first single from Mo and Karie's fourth studio album, their first concept project: an intimate graphic novel for all humans
The Talking Hours world premier from Transmissions To Missy, “Stop The Sound”
The Talking Hours music is two parts unabashed vulnerability and the algebraic product of an intricate, surgically precise expulsion of the demonic kind, teetering on the west-mesa’s edge of calculated, yet unquantifiable artistic rage.
Transmissions To Missy is a conduit of both real and metaphorical expulsion on a sonic platform for those seeking to exterminate the creepy crawlers wiggling around in the grey matter while locked in the closet with the lights off. Those who cannot or refuse to see their own beauty and agency through the noise of chasing. The last pointed-toe boot kick in the rib cage of a crying dream before actualization and becoming.
“Stop The Sound” is a dark green, mid-century modern Lazy Susan of human suffering, global anger, senseless prejudice, and debilitating hate with an extra large dish of hypocrisy wrapped in a buttery facade of slimy bigotry. The brilliant and eastern-block marching cadence gives a grave sense of urgency to stop it all and check what really matters. Now. Enough with the artificial conditions on love and life.
How do you stop the sound?
With a stunning tag team of both the cadence and oppressive environmental pressures, “Stop The Sound” gives the selection a somehow-still-relavent cold war and Soviet era curtain of pervasive fear that forged most of earth’s rock music in the 80’s. The Talking Hours will have everyone assume they are influenced by the synthesized popularity of the vintage genre, but upon further exploration, they have created their own graphic novel of advancement, complete with villains and heroes, and the peskiest of all human traits: shame.
How do you stop sound?
Jump in the ocean. Don’t surface until the demon (noise) within has no choice but to die or swim out of the host. Allow yourself to be reduced to insignificance by Mother Nature. Whatever emerges from the cauldron is life. March on. And it’d be a lot cooler if you marched on to “Stop The Sound” in your socks and underwear and boogie in the house like nobody on earth can see you.
From the moon, light traveler, tell your friends how much fun it is to boogie in yer skivvies while high on existence that is a pretty rad and thoughtful party from New Mexico’s legends of continued service to rock music. Now serving all galaxies.
A Personal Transmission Of Gratitude and Vision To Mo and Karie:
Mo and Karie are the comic book and community heroes we need now. In the 21st century. Masters of disguise and metaphor, “Stop The Sound” plays equally relevant in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan (West Darfur) as it does in the overcrowded streets of destitution in Albuquerque, and the pitch black, nailed-shut closets of our own regrets. Whatever the thing is we fight to hold on to that preserves our sense of identity, is the most fatal of all pursuits. The never-ending deconstructing and demolishing of individual actualization in a world of xerox’d identities.
Transmissions To Missy is a story album written, quite intentionally, for any listener to enjoy or consume, anywhere within range of the transmission; a deeply personal piece of art, it can metaphorically be applied to any dark mental issue under the modern sun. The album, much like The Talking Hours, renders itself timeless as such. Certainly there is a distinguishable element of long-time friend and recording/drumming guru in the high desert of fleeting hope, Matthew Tobias at Empty House Studio, at work in both the album and as a cosmic antenna among peers of the trade.
I chose “Stop The Sound” to premiere with the band, a joint effort between The Talking Hours and creative nonfiction writer, Joe Smith, Stringer, my surprising online handle that sort of became its own thing and one does not take the honor of selecting the first release off a Talking Hours album lightly. I chose a relevant, upbeat, danceable message that would spur thought into the collective dream of world peace and an end to all human suffering, particularly of the self-induced variety. Maybe then we can enjoy a little shadowy, levitating harmony on earth, as experienced on this otherworldly recorded single.
Mo and Karie were heroes for me one night at Sister Bar, like they have been to countless others before, and played the one to the audience, with a personal nod to me and the hell I was going through, all those lifetimes ago, and likely at every show since that night as they held space for me in my time of darkness, discovery, and return. To be a dedicated listener, upon hearing a new song a favorite band is working out for a new album, I quietly showed up to nearly every show after just to hear that song. The song has magical and mystical power and the first note transports me to a far, far away place that is peace among men and rhythm is gravitational, sustained by compassion for all humans. It’s all wrapped in nostalgia and layered with survival, and if you’re a live music junkie like I am, you’ll enjoy the foreplay of the finest intro known to any dreamer.
Right Now, more than ever, the world needs Stop the Sound.
I didn’t choose my personal intimate favorite transmission off their upcoming graphic novel to debut here on my musical and mystical-healing newsletter. I didn’t choose the song that helped me, a troubled man with a traumatic past seeking false external placement, return to my agency of origin by drowning my own shame, trashing my people-pleasing masks, and eliminating my projected expectations through perceived loss in the Coronado riptide.
I chose perhaps, for everyone else’s sake, the most urgent.
Stringer
Check out all things Talking Hours here
Light Chaser, Joey Sandoval (onyxone)
There are warriors in the crowd at every live music show in Albuquerque. They are in the trenches and they don’t say shit cause they are too busy honing their craft of chasing light. They chase it so we don’t have to. They each have their own tone, style, artistic flow, and a deep, deep love for their personal favs. I met one such warrior once. Couple of years ago now. Darted into my first Talking Hours show and began slicing, dicing, and chopping light with his katana blade of choice. He kinda blew my mind and over the years I got to know him a little on Instagram. His name is Joey Sandoval and he shot The Talking Hours astronomically perfect in every way for this album’s release. And for Albuquerque. Joey framed a clear, contemplative yet ominous vibe of both the alley and the assassin’s mind of a performing artist just before showtime; empty because it’s absent all bullshit, ominous because they are about to fuck shit up. Joey’s photography may have also subconsciously inspired me to put an urgent tone on this single selection and review. Who knows. But it’s damn fine to experience a mentor at work with a samurai’s creative rendering of their favorite muse. Damn fine work, Joey.