Hollywood's Chateau Marmont hotel is the inspiration for a new musical union between Britpop icon Jarvis Cocker and genre-blurring Canadian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Chilly Gonzales. This spring at the Barbican in London, the pair will debut Room 29, a show that brings to life the ghosts of the famous hotel, accompanied by a 16-track album of the same name. 

In a new film by British director Garth Jennings, shot in the Marlene Dietrich Suite at the Hotel Lancaster in Paris, the duo perform a live piano rendition of Tearjerker, the first release from the offbeat collaboration. Here, Jennings recounts the joys of spontaneous recording:

"I have just spent the best part of five years making an animated film called Sing, so to start and finish something in less than an hour was a joy. On top of that, shooting Tearjerker was a chance to film two of my favourite artists performing their beautiful song in a swanky Parisian hotel room. I wasn’t going to turn that down.

"Jarvis didn’t even hesitate to oblige when I suggested he might want to 'do a Pfeiffer' (lie on the piano like Michelle Pfeiffer in the The Fabulous Baker Boys.). My focus was all over the place because there wasn’t a rehearsal and I’d never used my stills camera to film before, but hopefully you are too focused on Chilly, Jarvis and their lovely song to notice."