"Most people know Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson album, but what's interesting is that in the early '90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don't really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it's the best. It's porn, it's queer, it's rap before that was a thing in France. It's just him mumbling obscene things on drum-and-guitar heavy production, really raw and tough. At the same time, it's poetic. The contrast is interesting: it's beautiful but dirty. On this album, Gainsbourg is hiding behind nothing. You get everything: the obsessions, the lust, the weaknesses, the scars. You see everything ugly and everything beautiful."

"I know everyone expected Bikini Kill. It was on my list, but I wanted to put Huggy Bear, because it was wacky. Nathan [Paine, Gossip guitarist] got me into them. It was pre-internet, pre-everything but I wanna say probably Nirvana helped too. They brought so many great things, like The Raincoats and Bikini Kill to the conversation. I think that was how we knew about them, but Nathan, he had all those 7”.. He would spend his lunch money on records and in fact when we moved to Olympia, when we went into Kill Rock Stars as we were going to be on their label, they told me a story that when Nathan moved there, and he came in, they all went 'You're Nathan'! Because he ordered so many records, they knew who he was. I thought that was so sweet. Also Bikini Kill was never on television, there was no The Word so to be able to see Huggy Bear in mainstream media, on television, that was so cool. See I didn't listen to L7, it wasn't melodic enough for me. Or Babes In Toyland either. It wasn't my 90s. It wasn't silly enough. One of my favourite things is this 90s resurgence because I get to wear all the clothes I wore as a kid. In Utero was gonna be on the list, but I took it off. And if I really wanna get down to the nitty gritty, I woulda put The Wipers, but let's be honest, I heard Nirvana first."

"It’s a toss-up because I love The Insider and, actually, Miami Vice as well. I’m going for Heat because, for me, when you’re really getting into a film is when you start imitating the characters and repeating lines and all that. I never really did that with Sonny Corleone but I did fantasise and think, God, how cool is Neil McCauley in Heat? It’s one of those movies that blew everyone away. In the mid-90s it was a very tired time, you know — a lot of the 80s panache had gone out of the movies and the early 90s was a period for me where I was discovering people like Almodovar. I was just bored of American films. Heat came out of nowhere. It was so muscular, so brooding and so clinically cool. Actually it’s long — it could have done with 20 minutes cut out of it I imagine — but that’s Michael Mann‘s condition. I haven’t seen Public Enemies — there was just something about it that stopped me, which is strange for me when it comes to Michael Mann. I went to see Vice the day it came out, first performance on the Friday. I was mesmerised by it. But Heat was such a powerhouse of a film. Even though I’ve inhabited the wrong side of the tracks in my life, I believe I’m still a good boy, a moral boy, but of course everyone roots for the bad guy in that film. DeNiro is just too fucking cool."