Ringing
After evolving from a solo project into a tight-knit trio, Brooklyn’s Ringing captured the raw instrumentals for their debut album in a single four-hour live session. Upon hearing the results, frontman Colton Walker scrapped his original lyrics and spent the next year meticulously rewriting, song by song.
The outcome is a fully realized body of work that reflects the extra care and time spent bringing it to life. Out March 20 via Julia’s War and Signal//Noise Records, “another cycle in the cosmic wash” is a record worth the wait.
Here, Walker discusses the creative pressure of that year-long overhaul and the band’s desire to "lean into the noise" while keeping their message front and center.
YY: “another cycle in the cosmic wash” was recorded live in a single 2024 session, but the lyrics were later scrapped. What made you realize they needed to be completely rewritten, and did that decision come with even more pressure to write something truly meaningful?
CW: We knew that we were recording live again, so we spent the couple months leading up to the recording session running the songs again and again to make sure that we could nail them. We had a bunch of ideas floating around since recording the 2023 EP, and we were still deciding which parts to use and how the songs would be structured. The recordings turned out great, and we banged out the whole album in four hours, but once I heard the instrumentals, I started to really think about lyrics. I wanted to do the songs justice.
Over the previous 18 months, I had mostly been writing stream-of-consciousness vocal parts, which has worked out well in the past… but the songs had been written over such a longer period of time that my perspective had changed. A lot of the lyrics didn’t really feel representative of what I wanted to say anymore. For the next six months or so, I spent most of my free time in my apartment trying out new ideas.
Having spent so much time on the album, I definitely felt a lot of pressure to write something compelling. Thankfully Marcos and Josh were really supportive throughout the process. I know it’s no fun sitting on unreleased music for too long, but we’re all really proud of how it turned out.
How did your perspective on these tracks change after a year of sitting on them?
I definitely went through ups and downs. I had all these ideas, but I had to fit them into these very fixed instrumentals. This is our first full length, and I still remember that first day, looking at 10 blank pages and feeling overwhelmed with the task in front of me. I didn’t really know how to begin. I tried jumping around between different songs and seeing what struck before eventually realizing that I needed to try to really focus on one song at a time.
It didn’t help that I had all these prior vocal melodies stuck in my head already. I didn’t know whether to try and fit new words into the same shape or to try and tune out the earlier versions and write songs from scratch. I ended up mostly going with the latter method, and I think the songs turned out much better as a result. The lines just flow more organically when you’re not trying to shove words into some preconceived notion of how they should be delivered.
After I had knocked out a few songs, I became more confident, but when I got down to the last few songs I got really stuck. “rose/bud/thorn” in particular was a really frustrating one because it has these weird time signatures that the original version had incorporated seamlessly, but when I tried to actually convey a message it was hard to figure out how to interweave the words with the rhythm of the song.
Sometimes when I hit a wall, it was hard to stay motivated. I considered scrapping some of the tracks altogether at times. But whenever a song finally came together, it all felt worth it and I was able to ride that high into the next song. Now that it’s done, I can’t imagine the album without any of them.
“incandescent,” the first single from the album, deals with the conflict of “admitting you aren’t happy with the way you’re living your life.” How does the song’s theme fit into the greater framework of the album, and what about it made you think it should be the first preview of the record?
In general, this album is about taking stock of where you’re at and figuring out where you want to be. The album title alludes to the fact that this isn’t necessarily a linear process, but rather one that you need to keep iterating on again and again. It’s not so much about where you’re going as it is about the process itself.
We choose “incandescent” for the first single because it’s sort of a pop song, but it still retains a lot of the qualities that make up our sound. It has to navigate this stuttery instrumental that trades off between quiet, intimate moments and these bigger, louder parts with overdriven guitars and crashing drums. The song keeps you on your toes and hopefully it gets you excited about what’s coming next with this record.
Your sound is described as having a “brutalist edge” while maintaining a “well-intentioned heart.” How do you balance the contrast of grittiness and vulnerability in the writing process for the music and lyrics?
I guess that thematically, a lot of our music is about balancing self-improvement with self-acceptance. Music has always given me the sense that I’m not alone, and that other people are going through the same things that I am.
But I also think that louder, heavier music provides this sense of catharsis that I find really valuable (and also a lot more fun). We want to write music that people can move around to. Music that makes you want to turn it up as loud as you can. It’s not about drowning things out so much as it is about leaning into the noise.
Since shifting Ringing from a solo project, how has the three-piece dynamic taken shape in your live sessions and shows up and down the East Coast over the past few years?
I love playing with Josh and Marcos because they’re always pushing our songs in weirder directions. They latch onto the more experimental ideas that we come up with and help convince me that they’re worth using. And we’re really super comfortable playing together. I think if there’s anything we’re known for besides playing loud, it’s that the three of us can really lock in and keep the songs tight through all the chaos. That’s why I’m so glad we recorded the record the way we did. Dan and Tim did a great job capturing the energy of the live band.
With the album out soon and more shows to be announced, what is the band most looking forward to in 2026?
Well we’re definitely looking to get out there and play more shows this year. We spent a lot of 2025 in hibernation while we finished the album. We’ve got some really cool stuff coming down the pipeline, but in the meantime we have a release show coming up on March 28 at TV Eye with Sun Organ, Wince, and manyshiningwindows. We love those bands and we love that venue, and we’re really excited to share these songs live with you.
We’re also stoked about having music on vinyl for the first time! That’s always been a dream of mine. You can head over to Signal//Noise if you wanna pick one up.
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