Christa Ebert, known professionally as Uno Lady, cut a swath through the Cleveland art and music scenes with an act that was unlike anything else being done here. Calling herself a “one woman choir,” she makes her music by processing and layering her voice with electronic effects pedals, creating a dense and hypnotically dreamy sound. Her oddball, sometimes surreal, lyrics add to the strangeness of her impact, as does her constantly changing appearance.
Her presentations keep morphing as well and adding new elements, which lately have included more visual ones. In early 2021, she released her “pandemic work,” an experimental film called Grounded intended as a meditative piece to inspire wellness and mindfulness. It consists of a series of brief pieces that blend together in a soothing stream of sounds and images filmed in her backyard including flowers, bees and clouds, as well as drawings and animations by artist Sequioa Bostick. The soundtrack featured her signature layered vocals, as well as synths, bells and sounds from nature and, on one track, words from meditation teacher Latoya Kent.
At the end of the year, she surprised us again with an album called Illicit Hymns recorded in cathedrals in France and Switzerland while she was doing a European artist residency. She recorded spontaneous vocal performances, done without clearance or permission, hence the album’s title, with the “processing” of her voice provided by the acoustics of the cathedrals.
She then moved to Maine. And In 2022, she released Le Flux, an album and short film made during a residency in France.
Then she was on the move again. She’s just dropped her ninth release called Alaska, recorded at a solar-powered arts fellowship at Chulitna Wilderness Lodge in Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Alaska. It reflects an amplifies her long involvement with environmental issues and passion for nature.
Again, she absorbed her surroundings to create the music, inspired by the Alaskan landscape.
“The percussion was made by drumming on trees and the beats are comprised of bird calls,” she explains. “These nature sounds pulse along with layers of vocal harmonies.”
She’s released Alaska with British Columbia’s Softseed Music on limited edition cassette tapes each with one-of-a-kind swirl art made by Softseed’s Dave Norman. If the tapes are sold out, you can still access the music digitally.
You can find more information about the release at unolady.com/.