12. Joëlle LéandreTaxi
I think she’s an unsung hero. Not many people know about her and she still performs today, however if you speak to any contra bass and double bass players who are any good at all, they’ll know about her. The way she plays is just so emotive, it feels like a large mammal, like hearing a whale cry and knowing that they know something. This record in particular uses her voice a lot, in very experimental ways. I find it to be one of a kind, and really wonderful. There’s a song called ‘Cri (Scream)’ and it’s really musique concrète, for lack of a better term, where she’ll sing through a telephone in French. It sounds like tape loops and that song specifically is just like, so great. I think I heard it in 2007, maybe a little earlier, when I was working in a music library. My job was to transfer records for the music library and that was one of them.
