Ringing - another cycle in the cosmic wash
- Samuel Stevens
- Mar 16
- 3 min read
There’s something beautifully disorienting about another cycle in the cosmic wash, the debut full-length from Brooklyn shoegaze outfit Ringing. Released March 20, 2026, via Julia's War Recordings and Signal//Noise Records, the record feels less like a traditional album and more like a weather system rolling in—slow, heavy, and immersive. Across ten tracks, bandleader Colton Walker and company craft a swirling, distortion-laced experience that blends shoegaze density with the restless introspection of modern indie rock.
Originally recorded live in a single session in 2024, another cycle in the cosmic wash thrives on immediacy. That decision gives the album a tangible pulse—moments stretch and collapse naturally, guitars bleed into one another, and drums carve space through the fog rather than dominating it. Yet the album’s real transformation happened afterward, when Walker scrapped the original lyrics entirely. What could have been a simple live document became a year-long process of reflection, rewriting, and rediscovery. The result is a record that sounds instinctual while still carrying the weight of careful emotional recalibration.
Opening with “datamosh,” Ringing wastes little time establishing their sonic palette. Layers of smeared guitar tones create a drifting haze while subtle rhythmic shifts keep the track from dissolving entirely into ambience. It’s a fitting introduction to an album obsessed with tension between clarity and chaos. That theme continues straight into “pool 2,” where shimmering textures ripple over a hypnotic groove, giving the impression of movement through water—slow, refracted, and strangely calming.
Mid-album highlights begin to sharpen the record’s emotional focus. “incandescent” stands out as one of the album’s most direct moments, lyrically confronting dissatisfaction with the way life has been unfolding. The instrumentation mirrors that realization: gentle melodic fragments eventually bloom into towering waves of sound, suggesting both vulnerability and release. Similarly, the album's most recent single, “rose/bud/thorn” pushes toward optimism without abandoning the record’s atmospheric heaviness, balancing fragile vocals against thick walls of guitar and moments of simplified instrumentation.
The album’s most explosive moment arrives with “want2want2,” where slick, driving drums slice through monolithic distortion. Metallic guitar tones grind forward as Walker’s vocals wrestle with cycles of stagnation and the desperate urge to break them. The track gradually collapses into crushing riffs, delivering one of the album’s most cathartic sonic payoffs.
Elsewhere, Ringing proves adept at pacing their soundscape. “moria” and “straylight bleed” lean into the band’s more expansive tendencies, stretching out their textures until melodies emerge like distant signals through static. By the time the album's penultimate track “3am” arrives, the album has settled into a late-night introspective haze—quietly melancholic yet strangely comforting.
Ringing's debut album closes out with the track “delusion lake,” which feels almost meditative. The band lets the distortion breathe, allowing fragments of melody to surface and sink again. Rather than ending with a dramatic climax, the album dissolves gently, reinforcing its central idea: that emotional clarity often comes not in sudden revelations, but in slow cycles of confrontation, doubt, and renewal.
For a debut album, another cycle in the cosmic wash feels remarkably self-assured. Ringing’s ability to break apart dense walls of sound with moments of fragile melody gives the record a dynamic edge, while Walker’s lyrical revisions add a layer of personal honesty that anchors the otherwise dreamlike atmosphere.
In the end, the album succeeds because it embraces contradiction. It’s heavy yet meditative, chaotic yet thoughtful, bleak yet quietly hopeful. Like the natural cycles it alludes to, another cycle in the cosmic wash reminds listeners that even within distortion and uncertainty, there’s always the possibility of movement forward.
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