Ringo - Pax Texiana (2024)

The banjo can be a gleeful instrument, a giddy, high-speed incitement to kick heels and stomp boots. Or it can be mournful and contemplative as on Pax Texiana, the second album by the ambient Texas banjoist Ringo. Ringo stretches out old, traditional tunes like “Elk River Blues” into slow-motion reveries, the picking preserved in amber-colored sustained notes against time and forgetfulness.

Krueger connected with Ringo through Eric Nyffeler of Bus Gas, a mutual friend. Ringo’s debut, Monocarpic, was released on Geology in 2016. The artist has been an aficionado of the long tones since the beginning—his first record includes a restless track called “Game of Drones”—but Pax Texiana surrounds clarion picking with even more evocative hovering tone washes. “Green River March” shrouds its resonant folk melody in billowing textures of sonics. The plainspoken banjo marches like a Civil War ghost over mist-shrouded battlefields long after the battle is over.
–Jennifer Kelly



Tracklist:
1-1 Ringo - Signal Wrath [4:09]
1-2 Ringo - Sick Sick Sick [4:54]
1-3 Ringo - Elk River Blues [3:43]
1-4 Ringo - Earthwide [5:13]
1-5 Ringo - Rara Aves [3:00]
1-6 Ringo - Green River March [2:26]
1-7 Ringo - Reverse Kill [6:41]
1-8 Ringo - Outer Native [3:03]
1-9 Ringo - Cumberland Gap [3:35]