Paloma Faith ‘not cool enough’ to sing Bond theme

Paloma Faith says she has “messed up” the opportunity to sing the next James Bond theme tune. Speaking at a march to mark International Women’s Day, she told reporters that she was being punished for openly admitting she wanted the gig.
“In the industry that I’m in, if you ask for something or you seem like you want something you don’t get it,” she said. “You’re supposed to pretend that you’re really cool as a cucumber and stuff just comes to you, but I’m not really that type of person. But now I’ve messed it for myself because I’ve told everyone that I would like to do it.”
The 33-year-old singer songwriter has made no secret in the past about her dream to follow in the footsteps of Adele, Shirley Bassey and Tina Turner by singing a Bond theme. Spectre, the latest movie in the 007 series, is due to open worldwide on 6 November, although the artist performing the theme tune has yet to be announced. Rumours suggest it could be Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran or Lana Del Rey.
Faith also found time at the march to talk about her mother’s influence on her feminist beliefs. She said: “My mum was a child of the 60s and was one of the people who burned their bra and made a pact to herself never to be oppressed by a man in her life, and so wasn’t. She has brought me up with those beliefs, so this is way more important to her than anything.”

Taylor's reign, Madonna gaffes and other talking points for Grammys 2015

1. Madonna has to be the talking point for the right reasons
She was a geisha for Nothing Really Matters in 1999, lycra-clad in 2006 for Hung Up and presided over 33 marriages in 2014, but there’s a sense that this year’s Madonna Grammy performance is the one that has to stick. It’s unclear which aspect of the campaign for new album Rebel Heart has been more damaging; the endless leaks or the Instagram naivety. While the release of six songs last December hasn’t exactly set the charts alight (they’ve only sold 131,000 downloads in America so far), Madonna’s at her best with her back to the wall so hopefully we’ll see controlled rebelliousness, tabloid-baiting controversy and a liberal smattering of unnecessary hashtags.
2. Sam Smith will lead a British invasion
Tom Petty fan Sam Smith’s polite ballads have dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and the feeling is his current chart momentum (his album’s been in the US top 10 for 32 weeks) could see him clean up in the six categories he’s nominated in. Certainly odds are in his favourto walk away with best new artist (over fellow Brits Bastille), and despite the presence of Beyoncé – more of whom later – it would be a shock if the generally risk-averse voting panel didn’t award In The Lonely Hour album of the year. Other Brits in with a shout include stand-in Radiohead alt-j for best alternative music album; Ed Sheeran; and Arctic Monkeys.
3. Could the Iggy Azalea backlash harm her chances?

All white on the night? Iggy Azalea performs at Sundance. Photograph: Mat Hayward/Getty Images

The success or otherwise of another Brit, Charli XCX, could depend on whether the backlash against Australian rapper Iggy Azalea manifests itself in the voting, with their collaboration Fancy up for two awards alongside Iggy’s nods for best new artist and best rap album. In a recent article detailing their Grammy predictions, Stereogum suggested Iggy was a favourite for the latter, before sarcastically adding, “OK, Eminem has a chance too because white people have really taken this hip-hop thing to a new level.” Expect Kendrick Lamar’s disappointing i single to win big by way of recompense for Macklemore and Ryan Lewis beating his Good Kid, M.A.A.D City to the rap album honour last year.
4. The duets should offer a chance for a loo break
Forcing artists together for one night of musical experimentation has become an award show staple and the Grammys are no exception. Who could forget Usher and Celine Dion doing unspeakable things to Michael Jackson’s Earth Song in 2010? For reasons people with fully functioning ears are still investigating, this year finds former Voice UK co-workers Jessie J and Tom Jones uniting to, I assume, over-sing each other into oblivion. Other random pairings include Annie Lennox with Hozier, Beck with Chris Martin, Gwen Stefani with Adam Levine and Lady Gaga with Tony Bennett, the latter of course having taken the art of unnecessary pairings to a whole new level. There’s also a trio – Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney playing snoozy new single FourFiveSeconds.
5. It’s crunch time for Lady Gaga’s jazz odyssey

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga peform at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

During the release of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s Cheek to Cheek last September, Gaga retweeted every positive review, referring to each journalist as a “music connoisseur”. Nominated for best traditional pop vocal album, a gong Bennett has won 11 times already, you sense a win for Gaga would mean more than any of the five Grammys she’s won to date. Nothing adds an authentic seal of approval to a leftfield career move following an under-performing album than a Grammy, and a win could help her move on from needlessly trying to prove she’s more than a great pop star. Either that or she’ll see it as one big thumbs up and we’ll get Cheek to Cheek volume 2 faster than you can say Michael Bublé.
6. Sia could steal the whole night
Singer, songwriter and sudden recluse Sia announced she was performing at the Grammys in a very Sia way. Continuing the theme for her 1000 Forms Of Fear album campaign, the announcement was made on Ellen from under an ill-fitting blonde wig while standing in a box that covered her from the neck down. This melding of the surreal with the mainstream sums up Sia’s last 12 months, her videos for Chandelier and Elastic Heart encasing massive pop songs in thought-provoking imagery. Nominated for four awards – including record and song of the Year for Chandelier – Sia could well be the surprise highlight, especially if she can pull off a performance as spellbinding as this.
7. It’s Max Martin’s time to shine
Given that he’s co-written and co-produced 19 US No 1 singles, it’s odd that Swedish pop overlord Max Martin has never previously been nominated for Producer of the Year. This year he’s honoured for his work on albums by warbling mini-Mariah Ariana Grande and Katy Perry, as well as Taylor’s Shake It Off and collaboration pile-up Bang Bang by Jessie J, Grande and Nicki Minaj. In other words, the majority of pop’s biggest songs of the last 12 months. Basically he has to win or I’m launching a Facebook campaign.
8. Will Katy Perry ever win a Grammy?

Katy Perry at the Super Bowl on Sunday: Grammy loser. Photograph: David J Phillip/AP

Despite five MTV VMA awards, six Billboard Music Awards and a Brit, Katy Perry has left the Grammys empty-handed every year since 2009. Nominated 13 times – including the two this year for best vocal pop album for Prism and best pop duo/group performance for Dark Horse – Perry wouldn’t exactly be paranoid in thinking there’s some sort of vendetta against her, especially when you consider 2011’s Teenage Dream equalled Michael Jackson’s record for most No 1 singles from one album – five made the top slot. Maybe, a bit like Martin Scorsese and the Oscars, Perry will finally nab a Grammy when she least deserves it – in other words, for Dark Horse.
9. Beyoncé may have peaked too soon

Beyonce with her 2004 Grammys haul. Photograph: Frederick M Brown/Getty Images

Performing at last year’s ceremony just three months after she shock-released her album, Beyoncé had every right to feel smug. The album had shifted over a million copies in under two weeks and its release strategy was being heralded as some sort of new dawn for pop royalty. You can’t help but feel, however, that she’d be disappointed that the album’s momentum has all but disappeared, and so while she’ll probably clean up in the R&B categories, her inclusion in the best surround sound album category probably doesn’t make up for being snubbed for both song and record of the year. Mind you, she already has 17 Grammy-shaped bookends so chances are she’ll get over it.
10. Taylor Swift will rule the 2016 Grammys
With her album 1989 – almost 6m global sales and counting – released too late to be eligible for this year’s awards, it feels like Taylor’s three nominations for Shake It Off this year are a mere prelude for the dominance that should take place in February 2016. This was all but confirmed when she announced she wouldn’t be performing this year. With 1989 boasting two US No 1 singles already and having spent 10 weeks topping the album charts, it feels like the campaign is only just getting started. Expect Taylor’s acceptance speeches this year – should she get to make any – to feature a very knowing sense of “This is nothing, just you wait until next year when I’m clumsily holding 10 gold gramophones while trying not to drop one.”

The playlist: electronic – Carl Craig, Lena Willikens, the return of Sueño Latino and more

From Carl Craig’s classical excursions to Lena Willikens’s Dusseldorf eclecticism and Juju and Jordash’s ballsy improv: it’s the electronic playlist

Carl Craig plays at the Movement festival in Detroit

Carl Craig and Francesco Tristano

Premiering exclusively on the Guardian is a live improvisation between disgustingly handsome pianist Francesco Tristano and Detroit techno master Carl Craig. Recorded for a Boiler Room session in Germany sponsored by Ballantine’s whisky (whose imagery you might well notice throughout) it comes as part of their Stay True Journeys series. Techno is naturally po-faced, so can seem awfully haughty when it actually tries to be serious and edge its way into the conservatoire. But whether its Villalobos and Loderbauer mining the ECM archives, or Craig and Moritz Von Oswald turning Ravel into dub techno, the worlds of classical music and techno can potentially dovetail beautifully. So it (mostly) proves here as Craig sends acid arpeggios on skewed axes, before Tristano returns with full-blooded house chords. Piano sounds are usually approximated in dance music, often beautifully and strangely, but it’s satisfying to hear the grand piano put to use in the unbecoming business of a fist-pumping anthem. You see can more from the same Boiler Room series here.

Lena Willikens

Another Guardian premiere here, from the debut EP of Cologne producer Lena Willikens, out next week on Matias Aguayo’s Comeme label. Willikens made a name for herself as an artist with immaculate taste: She’s hosted the likes of Hieroglyphic Being and Theo Parrish at her Dusseldorf club residency, and her brilliant podcast, Sentimental Flashback, showcases her crate-digging – one week will be her favourite bass guitar lines, the next, cold war-era German pop, the next a tour through global polyrhythms. All of this cosmopolitanism is poured into her tracks, which have the chilled jugular beat of minimal wave, the scrunched electronics of IDM, the wit of electroclash and the phantasmagoric camp of gothic pop. On lead track Howlin Lupus, Willikens breathes and howls like a wolf, tapping into the dark sexuality at the heart of werewolf myths, while the bassline scurries with maniacal intent. Club promoters – you have your first no-brainer booking of the year.

Galcher Lustwerk

While acknowledging his punkish credentials, part of me really wants underground producer Galcher Lustwerk to bring out an artist album and blow away the dance mainstream – one-offs like Chillin in the Booth have been as spectacular as his 2013 Blowing Up the Workshop mix, where he lays his steady enigmatic flow over peerless deep-house production. For now, we can happily make do with a new batch of re-edits, featuring lazy G-funk, ambient and the addictive riddim of Lumidee’s Never Leave You flecked with workout sweat. Best of all is this rework of rap crew OGC’s track Hurricane Strang, which has a gorgeous tension between the pert pulsations of Lustwerk’s beat, and the vocal line dragging its heels just behind it.

Juju and Jordash

Gal Aner and Jordan Czamanski are Israelis who moved to Amsterdam and immersed themselves in the playful, puckish house style of the city – and also added their own flavour, building their tracks from lengthy improvisations until a groove is smoothly carved. They ballsily use this technique when playing live in their trio with Move D, Magic Mountain High, but they’re skilled arrangers too, using the studio without sucking away the serendipity of improv. Their new album, Clean-Cut, is their best yet. Ambitious in its clean mulch of krautrock and jacking house, and channelling high-gloss 80s weirdos like David Sylvian and Laurie Anderson, the pair manage to nail it, and the title track is as good a place as any to start. The strutting bedrock could have been made by Moderat or Todd Terje, but then the kitsch panpipe melody begins, and is joined by sounds seemingly from a cheap instructional cassette for ayurvedic medicine. Pristine, yes, but definitely perverted.

Sueño Latino

Finally, clearing away the January blues is the turquoise flourish of Sueño Latino, reissued this week on vinyl following its original release in 1989. Perma-gurning crusties will insist that the second Summer of Love was ecstatic social emancipation on a par with the fall of apartheid, but when you hear tracks like this you can imagine the pharmacologically-assisted bliss must have been pretty significant. Built around Manuel Göttsching’s astral classic E2-E4 the Italian group fed a solid bass drum underneath, dotted tropical birdcalls and house pianos throughout, and added some almost comically sensual vocals from Carolina Damas. The canonical version is the Paradise Mix, but other remixes included here are equally strong. On Derrick May’s revisit from 1992 he revs up the bpm, adds extra melodic lines, and sluices mild acid over it all. Equally beautiful, though in a much more elegant way, is the Agua Version, which mutes the bass kick to keep everything flitting around in the mid-range and Gottsching himself turns up on the pounding Winter Version. Buy it, turn the central heating up, and spin around your living room wearing a flower garland for late-80s Ibiza on the cheap.

Films of Innocence: another of U2's misplaced grandiose gestures?

You might have thought that U2 would have had enough of springing internet-related surprises on people, following the unfortunate events surrounding the release of their 13th album, Songs Of Innocence. And yet, here we are again, three months on, with the unexpected announcement of 11 “art films” – one for each of the album’s tracks – being simultaneously premiered across a series of music and art websites.
Among the problems with the release of Songs Of Innocence was the fact that the conversation around the album became almost entirely about the means of transmission. The actual contents – what Bono called “their most personal album ever” – got drowned out by people debating the rights and wrongs of effectively sticking an album in 500m people’s inbox without asking them first: one of a number of things you rather got the impression that U2 hadn’t quite thought through before green-lighting the “digital release strategy”. The 11 films are pretty clearly an attempt to redress the balance slightly. Here are the personal responses to the album’s contents from what the press release calls “the world’s most acclaimed urban visual artists”, which is certainly one way of describing children’s author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers, best known for his – admittedly great – kids books about penguins, crayons and little boys flying aeroplanes to the moon.
The Miracle (of Joey Ramone).
In fact, Jeffers’ film, for The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), is one of the more interesting ones on offer: a series of animations interspersed with the processes used to create them, it’s also the film that addresses most directly U2’s instruction that the filmmakers should be inspired by Belfast’s political murals. DaLeast’s film for This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now is also pretty engaging – the artist as a homeless figure, struggling to survive on the detritus of a city – as is Ganzeer’s stop-frame animation for Volcano. At the other extreme, there are films that are either a little clichéd – ROA’s images of environmental destruction and an Ouroborous snake lays it on a bit thick – or a little too prosaic to capture your attention: the video by Portugese street artist Vhils for Raised By Wolves features a lot of slow motion footage of wolves roaming urban landscapes, and Song For Someone is a straightforward documentary film of graffiti artist Mode 2 creating a mural in Omagh.
Iris (Hold Me Close).
You occasionally wonder if the whole process was slightly rushed, and not merely because one of the artists involved, Chole Early, mentions something about the tightness of the deadline involved in making her film, for Iris (Hold Me Close): had Todd James had had more time, he might have spotted that, despite its title, the track The Troubles isn’t actually about the Troubles, and chose not to interpret it via a series of animated images of balaclava-clad petrol bomb throwers, riot police, guns etc.
The Troubles.
As rock videos they’re perfectly fine. You wouldn’t be struck by the particular brilliance of any of them if you saw them on TV, and you wouldn’t go out of your way to share the links to them on YouTube – certainly none of them do anything like radically recontextualise the songs they’re based on – but nor would you be horrified by how awful they are. You could argue that the problem is that the artists involved haven’t done enough to differentiate their work from something that a regular video director might come up with, although in fairness, a regular video director might have insisted that a little more actually happened than does in D*Face’s graphic novel/video game inspired film for California (There Is No End To Love).
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But the real problem is that, unlike plenty of other rock videos made by visual artists from Wolfgang Tilmans to David LaChapelle to Derek Jarman to Sam Taylor-Wood, they’re not being presented as rock videos, but as something rather more important: “art films”, complete with a portentous white-on-black title sequence that gives the artist’s name before the words “inspired by U2”, as if they’re something that really belongs not on YouTube or MTV but in the more rarefied environs of a gallery. What the band have done in commissioning a film for every track of their latest release would once have been called a video album and bunged out on VHS for the edification of die-hard fans: this is labeled a “global multidisciplinary group project”, not a title even the most high-minded 80s video album would have bothered appending to its contents, on the grounds that it sounds a bit pretentious. As it turns out, the Songs Of Innocence films are not unlike the album they’re based on: neither terrible nor incredible, and ultimately undone by U2’s apparently unquenchable desire to make a grandiose statement.

Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album may debut at Art Basel

Wu Tang Clan’s RZA: ‘They’re planning on something. That’s all I can say. But it exists. And it’s some very interesting people involved with it.’ Photograph: Tom Watkins/Rex
Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind rap album might be going up for sale at an forthcoming Art Basel event. RZA has hinted at a surprise announcement regarding Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, potentially due at December’s art show in Miami Beach, Florida.

“I can’t speak to nobody about this – I got an NDA [non-disclosure agreement],” RZA recently told Rolling Stone. But the Wu-Tang leader went on to speak about it anyhow: “[The album has] been handed over to an auction house, and they plan on doing something,” he said. “Art Basel is coming up. They’re planning on something. That’s all I can say. But it exists. And it’s some very interesting people involved with it.”

Art Basel is an annual modern and contemporary art event that takes place at three locales: in Miami in December, Hong Kong in March, and Basel, Switzerland in June. Wu-Tang Clan celebrated their 20th anniversary with an event at the Miami show last year, where Raekwon and Ghostface performed alongside pieces by visual artists. No official Wu-Tang events have been announced as part of Basel’s 2014-2015 schedule.

The Basel showcase would be the perfect stage for the group to introduce their rarest release. While the group has a sixth studio album, A Better Tomorrow, due out on 2 December, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is a much less conventional project: recorded over five years, only one copy has been made. It is locked inside a hand-carved, nickel and silver box, with the notion that it could be sold as an art object. “This is like somebody having the scepter of an Egyptian king,” RZA told Forbes in March.

 

Still, the group have been silent about plans for their “single-sale collector’s item” since announcing its existence in the spring. In April, RZA claimed there was an offer of $5m (£3m) for it, but the hip-hop crew haven’t announced details of any sale of the item or confirmed a previously proposed worldwide listening tour.