A Shoreline Dream - Written In Dust feat. Mark Gardener
Riding the beautiful wave of collaboration with Ride frontman Mark Gardener, Colorado-based postpunk / shoegaze trailblazers A Shoreline Dream present 'Written In Dust', a reverie-laced trip experienced as part of their new 'Whitelined' album - their eighth full-length record to date.
As with the lead track 'Everything Turns', for which Gardener also contributed vocals, this new offering entailed a full-on collaboration, from co-writing and recording through to co-production, between Gardener and A Shoreline Dream frontman Ryan Policky.
"Putting a visual representation together for 'Written in Dust' brought me back to early A Shoreline Dream days. Creating a visual representation to a dream state about how memories are clouded by technology and blurred moments of feeling abandoned and forgotten. Shooting the primary scenes with an actor I've been working with on my short horror films in Denver, while interplaying scenes from a recent trip to Salem and Maine, the whole thing is as cloudy and hazy as the dreams I have every single night," says Ryan Policky.
"Working with Mark Gardener on the single brought this whole new perspective to the theme, as his lyrics are filled with hope and became a guiding light to the piece. Finishing off the video with clips he sent over while in Prague brought it all together, seeing as the Czech Republic is the homeland to my surname, and also where our first release on vinyl has been manufactured." It's as if it all happened for a reason higher than just making new music. Like it was a calling to keep the dream alive no matter what horrible things are thrown at me."
Arriving two years after their critically acclaimed 'Loveblind' album, 'Whitelined' was released via Latenight Weeknight Records with Mark Kramer (Urge Overkill, Bongwater, Shimmy Records) overseeing mastering and the record's preparation for direct-to-vinyl production. The band's first album released as an LP, fittingly on 180g white vinyl, the album art is derived from a photo taken by Policky at Yellowstone and re-worked into an oil on photo on canvas, shortly after experiencing that place.
Formed in 2005, A Shoreline Dream is now multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ryan Policky and guitarist Erik Jeffries, who are based in Barnum, Colorado. Usually a selt-contained unit on most released, 'Whitelined' includes three collaborations with Mark Gardener. Together, they have crafted a record where shimmering walls of sound wash of turbulent percussion and swooning vocals to weave an otherworldly sonic reality.
Policky and Jeffries met Gardener at a Ride show in Denver on Policky’s birthday. Working throughout 2023 between tour dates, they wrapped up three songs, co-written and co-produced, near the one-year mark. This is the fifth time the band has worked with UK music legends. Ulrich Schnauss, Engineers, Chapterhouse and Rocket Girl Records have all been a part of the ASD family at one point or another.
“Ryan wouldn't have had a clue what was going to happen until I got the tunes from him. That was the starting point and Ryan sent me quite a few different tunes and instrumentals that he was pulling together. Out of those, there was two or three which I just suddenly latched on to and obviously the first one that really drove and led the way was 'Everything Turns'. For me, that's kind of perfect because I like to live in the present," says Mark Gardener.
"Obviously I love being in Ride, but that is also tricky because we have a catalogue, so we have to kind of live in the past sometimes, as well as being present. So I actually love being in my OX4 Sound studio, which I created a few years ago, and to be sent music like this. This was a real treat and it's an honor to be tasked with trying to sit and marry words with with music in a way that hopefully feels that they've always been there and have always been meant to be there".
The 'Whitelined' album is out now, available as a limited edition on 180g white vinyl and digitally everywhere, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp.
