One Round with A Shoreline Dream
I was fortunate to catch up with 3 of the 4 guys from A Shoreline Dream (Erik Jeffries, Enoc Torraca, &Ryan Pollicky) last week at Governor’s Park for an interview and here’s how it went….
Julio-How did you guys meet?
Ryan-We were in a band together, 2 bands in fact, Pure Drama. We were in a band for seven and a half yearsPrimarilyiy in thGothth scene, but we did all sorts of shit… We didn’t consider ourselvGothoth, but that was our scene.
Julio-Like Bauhus Goth?
Ryan-Like that stuff would come to our shows, it wasn’t so much but it was the people that would gravitate to us.
Julio-Did you guys intentionally do that?
Ryan-Not at all, the only time that we did something that would make you think that was a fetish fashion show that was to drum up some interest.
Julio-Like suicide girls/angel fire?
Ryan-One of the girls specialized in S&M that was very revealing and show 30 new fashions and 10 previous ones and that is the only thing that I can think of that would attract the goth crowd.
Erik interjects ,except for Cleopatra records. We were signed to Cleopatra Records and we did a cover of a Maryiln Manson song ‘Mechanical Animals.’
Ryan-We were doing really well on Mp3.com when that was the huge thing and we were #1 in Trip Hop for a while.
Julio-Do you listen to trip hop? Aside from the obvious, Portishead?
Ryan-Hooverphonic etc..
Julio-When you guys talk about Hooverphonic it reminds me of a Depeche Mode tribute album w/Gus Gus , Failure, Hooverphonic, I think it called ‘Music for the Masses’
Ryan– Yeah , yeah, that’s a great album.I loved the Hooverphonic song on there. Cleopatra got a hold of us and said ‘You doing really well on Mp3.com we want you to do a Maryiln Manson song and we were like, “Yeah, whatever…” So we were trying to get our exposure out there internationally, but we did get the fans to stop and look.
Erik-And you can still track it at stores under Pure Drama on the Marylin Manson Compilation CD. The funny thing is that all the bands on there are trying to regurgitate the existing music and we instead did a Trip-hop version
Julio-But that’s the purpose of doing a cover song , to reinvent the song.
Ryan-yeah, all the songs on the comp cd were hardcore / industrial except for us
Julio-KMFDM style
Erik- and here’s us with an acoustic guitar and that’s the whole idea that you have your own style with it.
Julio-Another thing I noticed was that your music was labeled as punk/hardcore/emo .
Erik-Yyou know what your looking is our marketing company put us up on some blog sites and but I didn’t think we sounded like that. But in the past we were labled shoegazer, so if you knew us and knew our past and knew what we’re into, there’s a lot of shoegazer and that got lumped with emo and you know the direction of emo with bands like AFI and that kind of feel and threw us in there. We are the furthest thing away from punk. We may have some upbeat songs, but that’s a little bit of a stretch. They are a little more harder edge. Some people have called us slo-core. Whatever the hell that is, I don’t know , I don’t care. It’s really weird that they put us on a punk site.
Julio-The cool thing is that your album hasn’t dropped and beatport already has a remix of some of your songs-
Ryan-Yeah we have an alliance w/Beatport.
Julio– They’re local right, what’s the name of the guy, Jonas Temple?
Ryan-Yeah, he use to be my boss and Erik’s old boss. I work at a place called Factory Design .
Julio-Beatport is blowing up !
Guys-yeah!! Enthusiastically
Julio-They’re doing a lot for the local scene and they are getting credited nationally as well
Ryan-one of the remixes on the beatport site is from our drummer gabe (DJ Gabriel) and he use to be in band with me before this band called drop the fear. We were an electronic band and he has always had the electronic background. Naturally a good choice to have him do the remix.
Julio-what better choice than gabe because of his ability to manipulate the loops and blips.
Ryan-Shaw did the other remix
Julio-Doees Gabe have a residency in Denver..
Ryan– He played in boulder , but with the stuff we’re getting into there’s no time.
Julio-Didn’t you guys do SXSWthis year? I heard that you guys played and were signed immeditately thereafter.
Ryan-No , we started our own label and signed ourselves.
Julio-That’s great , low overhead.
Erik-Yeah, we’re the ones incurring the risk .
Julio-so you guys fronted all the $$
Erik absolutely, latenight weeknight records we’re perpetuating and we funded all of this. We were so excited to do this.
Julio-who produced the ablum
Erick-Ryan
Julio-Ryan is the multi instrumentalist?
Ryan-the big thing is that we don’t want to sit around waiting for labels to call us. We felt comfortable and confidentwith our music and style and took it upon ourselves to take the music to the people by investing the money to get the marketing and publicity to get the music out nationally. Even though the producing of the video kind of suffered and we’re doing all of our stuff and it’s on the site .
Julio-Do you guys listen to My Bloody Valentine? I hear more of that in your music, because everywhere else seems to use the Sigur Ros line..
Ryan-yeah, I felt that filter said it pretty good when they said Placebo and Slow Dive. They got a hold of us because they thought we sounded like Slow Dive. They wanted any bands that sounded like slow dive. I don’t know if I would consider us like Sigur Ros or My Bloody Valentine. I don’t care, as long as people are listening. Its not a big deal.
Erik-That’s kind of funny because if you ask what we were listening to all of us were listening to something random. Enoc was listening to Matisiyahu , I was listening to Johnny Cash , Gabe was listeing to Lansing Dreiden,. Ryan was listening to Tori Amos
Ryan– Tori Amos, she was a big influence. As far as Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) is concerned I was very interested in the fact that he funded his albums entirely. Very inspiring and stuck with me that I read it and that’s what we wound up doing it ourselves.
Let’s not wait around for shit.
Julio-I admire that, that very DIY attitude.
Ryan-You have to have confidence in yourself. If you don’t who will. The labels finally decide they are going to believe in us I don’t believe in that, but you have to go for it.
Erik-That’s what you pray for , that somebody is going to love you .and they want to sponser you and whats more to love than that energy spent on the next 8 months and the only difference is the financial end of making it happen and it’s a no brainer. We jokingling say that we bought ourselves a new car but we don’t get to drive it. We’ll never regret it. I would never regret this. The only thing I would regret would be later in life “Why in the hell didn’t I do that?”
Julio– I don’t know if you have paid attention but another local band the Fray did pretty much everything themselved, even to the point of choosing their producer to keep costs low.
Ryan-Very inspiring, and they took it to this level that we weren’t looking to be on, and to take it to that level is amazing. And we’ve seen them live and they were phenomenal.
Erik-We thought it we were listening to the record play, it was so incredible, they sounded better than the record, and the lead singer , I can’t think of his name, kind of reminds me of Ryan- Because you look at what Ryan does, he is active in the music community and he is doing different things from photography to music, film , design and it reminded me of what the Fray did to be active in the community and having stuff going on in 100 different avenues to generate interest and I feel like we are kind of like that but also being very active in music.
Julio-Talking about film, does film inspire your music?
Guys-hahaha
Erik– the Tornadoes
Enoc-We watched a lot of documentaries about the weather.
Ryan-A project we did for a while is have instrumentalist show up like Cash Flow and play a movie and score the soundtrack on the fly. Visuals always inspire big time. There’s so many films have inspired. Anything david lynch, Ive been inspired by the ‘Grandmother’
‘Eraserhead,’ ‘Mullholland Drive,’ and ‘Lost Highway.’
Julio– ‘Lost Highway’ has a great soundtrack
Ryan -Cronenberg, something about you don’t need talking, like ‘Spider’ one of his later ones, the majority has no dialogue, the main character has no dialogue, the music guides you and visuals sets the tone and the story. So involved but you can still tell what’s going on, kind of a visual concept of what we’re about.
Julio-out of the soundtracks that you have listened to lately is there one you wish you scored ?
Ryan-‘Mullholland Drive’, that was a very inspiring one. ‘Dead man,’ it has Johnny Depp in it and Neil Young scored that one on the fly. It’s pretty cool, its just him on guitar . I would definatley love to do any Cronenberg. That’s how Latenight Weeknight started. Enoc, Gabe, and I would get together and make stupid ass horror movies . We admit they sucked. Its Bloodshed Deathbath productions and we have a website and horrible shorts kind of like kids in the hall like 5-10 shorts, but the first one is 20 minute shorts. The packaging is funny because on the second it has a quote saying “Ssorry, the first one was better.”
Enoc-Ryan and I use to get together every weeknight and that’s how Latenight Weeknightstarted. I met Ryan a few years ago and I would go to everyhow because I liked what they were doing.
Julio-The electronic band?
Ryan-Yeah, electronic, people thought we sounded like the Cocoteau Twins/Sigur Ros.
Enoc-I love electronic music, I have solo projects and I would send ryan my tracks and I thought I was moving back to New York.
Julio– Are you from NYC?
Enoc– No, I’m from Puerto Rico.
Julio– Ahh Puerto Riqueno, te note el accento.
Enoc-So I lived in New York and came to Denver for a while, and decided to go back to NYCand Ryan got a hold of me and said ‘Lets Jam!’ and we recorded the ablum.
Julio-and the album is coming out Sept 19 everywhere?
Ryan-Digitally and we’re working on the distribution.
Julio-The photos are amazing and the artwork is great. I want to say congratulations and good luck !
Guys– Thanks! 
Label Website – http://www.latenightweeknight.com
Myspace Website – http://www.myspace.com/ashorelinedream
Official Website – http://www.ashorelinedream.com