"This album was massive for me. Still is. I first heard this on a cassette in the post from my brother with a note saying, "Demis Roussos on bass!" He put two tracks on there and they both blew my mind. I knew immediately I needed to find this record but was convinced it was incredibly obscure. A few weeks later, I was in this old drill hall in Falmouth that doubled up as a house-clearance furniture shop. Flicking through the records in there, between multiple copies of No Jacket Required and some Cornish male-voice choir stuff, there was 666. I bought it and raced home and was pretty pleased to hear it was a lot more bonkers than I could ever have imagined. This album is properly bonkers. The gatefold sleeve has a 2CV crashed into a wall; the music is so incredibly inspirational. As a piece of work it's outside of any frame of reference – it's like discovering a new colour or a new flavour. Every time I see a copy I have to buy it – I give it to anyone I know who doesn't have it yet."

"Despite the fact I love all sorts of Crimson records, I think this is still my favourite. Maybe just for nostalgia reasons, I listened to this record when I was very young. Before I was into jazz, before I was into weird music, I always loved this. Obviously I grew up with The Beatles and the Stones and Floyd and stuff, but I remember I was in a car and Jimi Hendrix came on the radio. I said 'what is this?' I was only 12, and a guy I was with looked at me like I was insane. In those days gas stations had lots of cassettes so we pulled over and I bought a cassette that had Are You Experienced on side A and Axis: Bold As Love on side B. I listened to it until it was completely worn through. That was my introduction to the 60s stuff that I hadn't been brought up listening to. King Crimson's early stuff was among that new, exciting 60s music that I hadn't heard. Robert Fripp became my guitar hero, he used to do a League of Crafty Guitarists thing in New York so I saw him play. I became a Fripp head, I saw them play in the 90s with my English teacher. It blew my mind, but they didn't play the old stuff. I'm not musiciany enough to like that stuff, but the early stuff resonates a lot."

"I saw this movie in Cincinnati right before I began shooting a new film, which was a terrible thing – because I couldn't get it out of my head and found myself spending too much time thinking about it and not on the work I had at hand. It's a real mystery of a movie, and I don't think I'll ever quite figure it out. Nor would I want to. If my new movie suffers, I'll hold Olivier Assayas partially accountable for making something so wonderful."