A Shoreline Dream & RIDE’s Mark Gardener present ‘Hollow Crown’, a sonic gem from new ‘Whitelined’ LP

Riding a beautiful wave of collaboration with Ride frontman Mark Gardener, Colorado-based postpunk / shoegaze trailblazers A Shoreline Dream presents their new video for ‘Hollow Crown’ feat. Mark Gardener. Apart from contributing vocals and guitar, this release entails a full-on collaboration – from co-writing and recording through to co-production – between Gardener and A Shoreline Dream frontman Ryan Policky.

Earlier the two presented two collaborative singles ‘Everything Turns’ and ‘Written In Dust’, both reverie-laced trips revealed as part of A Shoreline Dream’s new ‘Whitelined’ album – their eighth full-length record to date.

“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 honour to be tasked with trying to sit and marry words with music in a way that hopefully feels that they’ve always been there and have always been meant to be there”.

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 self-contained unit on most releases, ‘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 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.
The ‘Whitelined’ album is out now, available as a limited edition on 180g white vinyl and digitally everywhere, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp.