[b]Anonymous asked:[/b] You’ve heard of using butts as drums... now get ready for: BALL DRUMS!! Not only can you use them to play that SWEET 20-minute-long drum solo, but depending on how hard you hit you can make the poor guy yelp different notes to improve you preference!

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“Welcome, radio listeners. We’re here with Jalekka St. Jones, talking about her new album, [i]Squawk[/i]. Jalekka, welcome to the show.”

“Glad to be here!”

“So the whole music industry has been buzzing about your lead single from the album, ‘Shattered’. Pitchfork called it ‘the most achingly raw pop of the decade’, and it’s been at the top of the Billboard charts for almost a month now. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration for that song?”

“Well actually, ‘Shattered’ was the very first song that I wrote for this album. I discovered that my fiancé had been cheating on me, and we had this huge messy fight where I sort of…broke a part of him in retaliation for him breaking a part of me. I’d never heard a guy beg for forgiveness like that before. And so I wanted to sample that raw agony and turn it into a song.”

“Yes, a lot of people have commented on the main sample that you used for ‘Shattered’ – that ethereal wailing, layered on top of itself to build a wall of sound. Where did you find that sample?”

“That’s actually a recording from our fight! Like the title of the song says, there was this moment where something between me and my ex finally, uh, ‘shattered’, and that’s when he made this ghostly keening wail that was unlike anything I’d ever heard. I happened to be recording the whole experience – I like to record stuff from my life for musical inspiration – and so I happened to capture this beautiful moment where my ex suddenly felt half of himself disappear. I mean, how could you NOT cry out after that kind of loss?”

”That sounds incredibly intense.”

”It was. But it was a really important moment for me, and it really shaped the sound of the rest of the record. Once I realized the unique power of that sound, I knew I needed it in all of my music.”

”Does the rest of the album have a similar sound, then?”

”Oh yes! It took me a little while to figure out how to create that unique kind of sound in a way that was, uh, less destructive, but I worked with some really talented studio musicians, and together we made some incredible music. We spent a lot of hours together in the studio, just trying different things and recording the results. You wouldn’t believe the balls these guys had, and the stamina – they were under SO much pressure day after day, and there were moments when I honestly thought everything was about to explode, but somehow everybody made it out intact. Bruised, maybe, but intact.”

”Your last album was notable for its creative use of percussion – can we expect more of that in this album as well?”

”Oh definitely! I brought in a LOT of guys to help me find the sound I wanted for those long, drawn-out drum solos, and I laid down most of the tracks myself. I really enjoy exploring an instrument and discovering every possible sound it can make – the squeaks, the groans, the distortion – so it was great to have a team around me that was willing to help me explore, and willing to let me push their boundaries to create a really unique sound for this album.”

“One more question before we take a break to play your second single from the album, ‘Pulp’. Some of your fans have started calling you the new ‘Queen of Pop’. How do you respond to that?”

“Well, I don’t like to restrict myself to a single genre…but there WERE multiple pops involved in making this record. I guess ‘Queen of Pops’ would be a more accurate title.”