Music
Press
Nic Harcourt: “I've got a feeling we'll make United Ghosts this week's Daily Connection... listen for it next week every day at 8am, noon, and 5pm...”
KCSN 88.5FM Connections by Guitar Center - KCSN 88.5FM
Artrocker Magazine: The effortlessly cool LA four piece brought some much needed Californian warmth to the frozen tundra of London W1 with the close harmonies of ‘Holes Into The Night’. You found yourself being transported to a synth-tinged future where the sun is always shining, the car windows are down and your sunburnt arm drums on the door as it dangles out the door. Shimmering guitars, sandblasted drums and Sha Sabi’s wistful vocals certainly warmed me up... - Artrocker Magazine
Critical Wave UK: United Ghosts blew me away with their, excuse the pun, haunting performance and as soon as I got home I just wanted to listen to their songs over and over. Watch out, these guys will haunt you. - Critical Wave UK
Artrocker Magazine: United Ghosts blend a wide variety of influences ranging from Kraut-rock to shoegaze to produce something extremely pleasing for the listener….even on first listen it is clear that United Ghosts are not your quintessential glossy LA act. - Artrocker Magazine
Volume Magazine: “United Ghosts' debut album plays through like a journey in their hometown Los Angeles from dusk until dawn…brooding and stately.” - Volume Magazine
Volume Magazine: “United Ghosts' debut album plays through like a journey in their hometown Los Angeles from dusk until dawn…brooding and stately.” - Volume Magazine
Shoegazekid: "I must say that this is one mighty album, and even in the great company of mbv and Veronica Falls, this a heavy contender for 'album of the year'!" - SHOEGAZEKID No Pericoloso Sporgersi
Amoeba Music: "'Unhypnotized' features lovely female/male vocal interchange over a film-noir-inspired riff…Ironically, the whole thing’s pretty hypnotic." - Amoeblog
Amoeba Music: "'Unhypnotized' features lovely female/male vocal interchange over a film-noir-inspired riff…Ironically, the whole thing’s pretty hypnotic." - Amoeblog
Amoeba Music: "'Unhypnotized' features lovely female/male vocal interchange over a film-noir-inspired riff…Ironically, the whole thing’s pretty hypnotic." - Amoeblog
Amoeba Music: "'Unhypnotized' features lovely female/male vocal interchange over a film-noir-inspired riff…Ironically, the whole thing’s pretty hypnotic." - Amoeblog
LA Record: “…this first 7” by Silver Lake dream-rockers United Ghosts has a bite to it that you wouldn’t expect based on their influences and based on their love for reverb and echo.”
Vol. 6 No. 3 / Issue 106 - L.A. Record
Las Vegas Weekly: “…this Reverb set marked the Ghosts first-ever performance. They sounded amazing, like arena quality.” - Molly O'Donnell
Buzzbands.la: "...hazy guitar and synth textures and boy/girl vocals straight out of the jetstream…United Ghosts’ debut 7-inch, “Holes Into the Night,” is like a dream in fast motion, a roll-the-windows-down psych-rocker." - Kevin Bronson, Buzzbands.la
Indie Darkroom: “Unhypnotized” is ironically quite hypnotizing. The enchanting vocals from Sha & Axel are a combination that mix perfectly aside this brilliant, dreamy track. The video, directed by Arian Soheili, is a fun yet cinematic work that wonderfully accompanies the track by portraying the band as a musical saving grace to a crowd of droned out listeners dressed in white. - Steven Newcastle, Indie Darkroom
RockNYC: They were an excellent surprise with their combination of power-choruses filled with girl-boy vocal harmonies and layered shoegazing-atmospheric soundscapes, which could go from beautiful poppy melodies to more fuzzy, slightly-krautrock-going-to-psychedelia slow burns.
They were celebrating the release of their 7-inch ‘Holes Into the Night’, and the two songs featured on it are right now the only songs you can listen to on the internet; but they said they were working on an album and, in front of three mics decorated with Christmas lights, they gave us a taste of it.
The drumbeats and guitars were bright, and the always present, catchy melodies, well served by the sweet harmonies between bassist Sha Sabi and guitarist Axel Steuerwald, were close to something stolen from the 60s at time, gliding above a big sound whose climatic developments was quite diverse, sometimes building up a thunderous and explosive soaring atmosphere, other times staying in a more contained layer.
Many songs had that wide-screen, long-road-ahead/highway-driving imagery, with slow intros, dreamy-pulsating developments and long endings, and were touching all the right spots in the brain, giving out their numerous influences (one song made me even think about the Velvet Underground) without losing any originality. - Alyson Camus, RockNYC
Drowned in Sound: United Ghosts may sound like they've emerged from mid-seventies industrial Germany but there's a heady mix of effects-laden electronica at the heart of the Californian quartet's make-up.
- Drowned In Sound
Discography
"United Ghosts" self-titled debut album (2013)
"Unhypnotized" online single (2012)
"Holes Into the Night" single (2011)
Photos
Bio
Meet Los Angeles band United Ghosts. The band blends a seemingly dizzying collection of influences that range from Kraut-rock and electro to classic psychedelia and shoegaze into a cohesive sound that celebrates its influences, while keeping one eye firmly set towards the future.
Initially conceived as a loose garage-studio project by founding members and co-vocalists Sha Sabi and Axel Steuerwald, United Ghosts quickly developed into a fully-fledged band with the inclusion of drummer Sean Burgess and guitar player Jason O.
United Ghosts released its debut 7", “Holes Into the Night” in November 2011. With its propulsive Kraut-rock beat and blissful, yet haunting melodic textures, "Holes..." quickly made waves in the blogosphere, and despite its late-in-the-year release, made a number of "Best of 2011" lists, from Buzzbands LA and LA Record to NYC's Indie Darkroom, and garnered attention and favorable reviews worldwide. The accompanying video expanded on the track’s alluring Lost Highway ambience, and can be seen on NME.com as well as YouTube.
Radio acclaim soon followed, most recently by UK indie maven Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 and John Kennedy on XFM. Los Angeles DJ Nic Harcourt, formerly host of the legendary “Morning Becomes Eclectic”, had already made the track his “Daily Connection” granting three spins a day for a week, and New York City DJ Steve Newcastle of Dream Wave Radio, 87.7FM had “Holes...” as no. 3 in the station's best tracks of the year list.
Energized by the positive response, the band returned to the studio to complete their debut full-length album "United Ghosts", which was released in April 2013.
The band has recently returned from a successful mini-tour of the UK to support the album release there, which brought a lot of new fans and much critical acclaim from UK press and blogs. Upon the band's return to LA, indie maven Nic Harcourt started spinning “Sparks From A Cold Star” (which will also be the next single) on his show Connections on KCSN.
“We want to explore a different side of LA,” says Steuerwald, “the side we know. It's not all sunshine and gloss. There's a hazy, murky, electric-night-pulse to this place that is really interesting. Where sometimes the dream goes astray, takes a wrong turn and gets lost in the lights.”
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