A pulse of electronic sound waves, hypnotic vocals and a striking guitar riff pull you into UCHE YARA’s debut album “BODYSCANNER”. The record blends club textures with sharp, memorable lyrics. As a multifaceted artist and multi-instrumentalist, UCHE YARA has been creating genre-bending music for years. All these facets now merge perfectly in “BODYSCANNER”, which she recorded with collaborator Alex the Flipper. “I always thought working on an album would be super stressful, but it was a flowing process. It felt as if I wrote this album with my body, just giving my intuition free rein”, she says.

This focus on the body, the self, connecting with itself and others is a central theme of the album. “I can only connect with others when I am connected with myself, when I am present, and when there is space for myself and for the connection itself. Connections happen when your inner child awakens, when there is resonance.” 

Playing off the theme of the x-ray scans, the song “BODYSCANNER” asks the listener to remove all their layers: “Please, remove all your layers, I’m your body scanner, let me see who you are.” I asked UCHE YARA whether letting other people see who she is makes her freer or more vulnerable. “It is a tension between both and it depends on the space whether I feel safe removing my layers,” she says. There is multiple layers to the lyrics, UCHE explains. “They are superficial yet turn the focus inward. To me, this is similar to the experience of being in a club: being seen but also observed. I only realised the depth of the song after creating it.”

Don’t Try to Fit in

A central theme of BODYSCANNER is the tension between how we see ourselves and how we are seen. I asked UCHE YARA about her experience of it: “I have realised, through the process of this album, that I am read as a Black woman. I am from a white country, a white environment. I have lived so naively, but I am being read politically, and I only really noticed this in Berlin, in my community. It is extremely interesting to work through this now. I have lived in a parallel universe within my own body.”

This is where the tension, the disconnect between how people are being perceived and how they perceive themselves, was most evident, she has ever realised. Her community and Berlin have helped her work through this, yet she still feels disconnected, especially from Berlin club culture. I wanted to know what UCHE YARA would change about the club culture: “People need to be more attentive; we need greater understanding of the singularity of the moment and the space we share. It should be understood as a collective musical experience. We shouldn’t try to be digestible for a certain crowd we’re scared of not fitting in with. I had the best club experience at a BiPoC Queers-only event. Everyone was just there to experience the music together. But the casualness of drug use, the need to consume to connect, which is present at too many events, should be questioned.  Overall, we need safer spaces. Clubs need more funding and education about the origins of club culture too.”

Photo by Polina Gavrilova

“I want my audience to bring mindfulness of themselves and each other to my concerts, a respect for the shared experience. Ignorance and staging stay outside.”

How Can it Be that We All Feel But Stay Indifferent 

After the title track draws you in, the album seamlessly flows into the catchy second single “hello hello”. The song questions if there is any hope or faith in our current societal climate, calling out for a witness to injustice and destruction. I asked UCHE YARA if she found answers to dealing with feelings of hopelessness: “I don’t have answers, but having been able to grasp this feeling in the song and in conversation with my friends and community helps to experience these feelings. If you can’t share, you will become lonely in it.”

tell me if disinformation ever led to anything
every hunger, every bomber
dreams against the burning engines
quiet prayer in an iron thunder
orders twist the law
unheard in an echo chamber
see the voices rise and roar
– lyrics from “hello hello” by UCHE YARA

BODYSCANNER needs to be listened to in connection: with yourself, with a crowd full of people hungry to dance and to express themselves collectively. It is an introspective yet urgent club album that makes the listener question their own practices of connection and listening. “BODYSCANNER is the most honest and radical thing I’ve ever written & it‘s there to be experienced.”

Editorial Note by Felicia Ete Aghaye

Back in May, I had the chance to get a first glimpse into “BODYSCANNER”. UCHE YARA gathered her community on stage and in the halls of Sonnenraum to celebrate what the album is truly about: collectively and consciously experiencing music, with everyone in the moment together. She guided us with such an infectious playfulness that swiftly swept everyone into her groove. We were all blown away by the electronic extravagazna she conjured that night, and now, with “BODYSCANNER” released in its entirety, it is safe to say that Uche’s bombastic energy didn’t loose an ounce of its punch in record form.

Artwork by @elleladli

Artists like UCHE YARA remind us time and time again why we at OFFKEY, with Berlin and its BIPOC and FLINTA communities as a home base, find so much joy in celebrating and highlighting their art. Their creations reflect an ever present spirit of resilience and innovation, in a world where doom and downfall creep in from every corner. There are so many beacons of light in this city that encourage us to explore new paths and build independent structures  – speaking both musically and metaphorically.  Because we at OFFKEY absolutely agree that artistic independence needs to lead the way both in creativity and creation. 

“BODYSCANNER” embodies this spirit in its bold and eclectic soundscape just as much as in its independent creation. With her body of work, UCHE YARA already demonstrates an artistic coherence ‘beyond her years’ that all the more gives expression to the environment that allowed her to safely explore and flourish, and to create something entirely her own. Directly influenced by the Black, BIPOC and queer community Uche found in Berlin, her debut album is a dedication to the journey of self-discovery and the strength it entails. And even more so, it’s an invitation to follow her steps onto the dancefloor.

BODYSCANNER by UCHE YARA is out now via goldendays FM. Stay up to date with the artist via Instagram.