"This one's not quite as contemporary as Electrelane – in fact, that's putting it mildly! It's an old folk song that dates back to the seventeenth century, so it's been passed down through the generations. “This is the version that fits the mood of this collection of songs the best I think. It's another one about losing somebody; it's about a young woman who's lover has been kidnapped by a press gang and taken out to sea and she's not going to see him again - it's a terrible, terrible tragedy. “Steeleye Span are a funny band; they came out of a scene that's not too far removed from Kevin Ayers and that electric folk movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. They evolved into something that perhaps wasn't so cool later on - there's a record called All Around My Hat that's a bit Alan Partridge - but those early albums are really great. “I definitely have a personal connection to ‘The Lowlands of Holland’. It's an unusual song, actually, in that I can never figure out whether it's Scottish or Irish in origin. It doesn't really matter, but it has significance for me because I live and have my studio in Dumfries and Galloway, and in the song, Gabe Woods is singing about the man from Galloway. “So I imagine it's where I am and when I'm hundreds or thousands of miles away from home, I hear that song and I imagine being back in Scotland. It generates a degree of homesickness and wistfulness and it's good to feel that, because it reminds you of what home is, and why you should return there.”"

"Back in the late '60s and early '70s, children's records were all the rage, with stars making cameo appearances. The Little Prince was no different. It featured Richard Burton in the role of the narrator in the audiobook. It had a who's who at the time as well, with big Hollywood names such as Jonathan Winters and a whole other bunch of people. The idea was that you'd read the book and along with it, you'd hear some sort of strange synthesiser. I got it for my birthday in 1974 when I was eight years old. It had one of those effects where the moment it was on the vocoder, I was paralysed, I stopped what I was doing - this I could vividly remember and I would sit down and listen. I literally started to pound tables to turn onto side two! The whole story is read out and the idea of a concept such as narration going over an orchestration or some sort of a continuous, linear soundtrack is something that stayed with me. It gave me the momentum to later on follow on with the idea of a concept record. Certainly a lot of our music has that fairy tale aspect to it and The Little Prince would have been one of the first influences - along with one or two others - that embedded in the DNA of Mercury Rev very early on. This is also probably my favourite book and after 40-45 years it still hits me. Try as I might to go in another direction sometimes, this musical aspect still comes out of me."

"Growing up in America in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s every Sunday evening there was The Walt Disney Hour on TV and before they played whatever Walt Disney movie or animation that was on, they would always begin with ‘When You Wish Upon a Star.’ This was probably the first embedding of music into your DNA outside of something that your parents might listen to on the radio, this was something that was wholly your own, because this was children’s music. “Your parents would plop you down in front of the television set on a Sunday night and this was your hour of music basically, so for myself, Grasshopper and a number of other people this otherworldly song was really the first music that informed you. Whatever music was to come in your life, this was the first information that was literally downloaded into your bloodstream. “Early on in Mercury Rev we were using feedback and Grasshopper was using guitar elements, because we’d yet to learn how to score orchestrally ourselves, we were just too young. Yerself is Steam was our early attempt at orchestrating but we were using feedback and noise and basically any note we could grab on the fretboard or the piano, because we weren’t really accomplished rock musicians. Like everyone, when you begin you sort of fumble around. “The idea of the layering and the dynamics that are in some of those very early Disney movies, such as Fantasia or Pinocchio was definitely in our consciousness. It was definitely one of the few things we could lean on as teenagers."

"I found out about the Cardiacs and discovered A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window and On Land And In The Sea simultaneously. They’re very hard to find now, the CDs are going for upwards of 60 or 70 quid on eBay. It’s progressive music, but done in a really mental way. It sounds like one guy’s mind being acted out by some willing and accomplished musicians. It’s really insane. There are loads of tempo changes. I think Tim Smith’s voice sounds a little like Robert Smith, but in a much more manic way. I think that’s what really speaks to me [laughs]. It’s almost like what progressive rock is made for. You expect progressive rock to be manic. The production sounds a little bit more like a real band on On Land And In The Sea, but on A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window there’s a song on it called ‘R.E.S.’ which is just seven minutes of strange music. It’s like 60s easy listening music but it’s still definitely prog. I was criticised once actually. We did a trip into the rain forest in Costa Rica last year and I DJed it, and afterwards everyone was like, “yeah that was great… maybe too much Cardiacs though.” It’s a floor filler, but a floor emptier as well – and it’s hard to know where the threshold is! On those albums there are a lot of people called Smith, and I’m not sure whether they’re brothers or cousins or aunties or whatever, but there’s a saxophonist, bassist, guitarist, keys, and it’s all very symphonic. More symphonic than you’d expect."