"Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese. Growing up, most of my friends were interested in becoming bankers or working in a company. I, however, wanted to become a movie director. This was something that I couldn’t be open about with my friends and oftentimes I felt lonely because I couldn’t share those aspirations. I lost my father when I was quite young. My mother was working and I was a latchkey child. Even if I talked to a lot of people, I always felt a little lonely. I thought maybe I’m sick, maybe I’m ill. There was no counseling, or there were no therapists. It was not a trend at that time. So I thought maybe I’m really strange. After watching Taxi Driver and seeing Travis, I felt this immense similarity between the character and myself. He lives in New York, surrounded by so many people, but he still felt lonely. This surprised me, and I thought “Here is this guy, living in America, who is like me.” Seeing his character, I felt relaxed and realized there are others like me. I felt I was okay. And I wanted to put that feeling in Death Stranding. Like, you’re all alone, trying to connect the world. Everything has been connected by the internet recently. In so many ways, everyone is battling each over the internet. If you play online, you get head shots, but, like, you don’t know who you actually shot, right? To connect is a very positive concept. But there are people who don’t want to feel connected anymore, and I think a lot of people play games that don’t offer human connection. I can’t tell anyone that I feel lonely or I’m in solitude, and I have this big problem which I couldn’t share with my friends. It’s a big load to carry, just like Sam Bridges. And you’re kind of traveling, you’re sent orders, you go to this place, you trip over, and drown in a river. But at one point, you have this indirect connection system where you know you’re not alone. It’s not an isolated, lonely planet. There is someone who creates a road. There is someone who has made the coffee. It’s not just me, and I wanted to put that in a game. This is the same feeling I got from Taxi Driver."

"They were a black punk band from America. I love this record because it's kind of… erudite in its expression but it's fucking brutal. It's razor sharp. It's also gloriously anarchic. It's kind of punk but it's got real rock & roll lineage to it. The titles are brilliant: there's one called 'Politicians In My Eyes', another one called 'Rock-N-Roll Victim', 'Let The World Turn', 'You're A Prisoner'. It's just a real lost classic, and it's got real power. I can't remember if they're from Detroit or not - it would make sense, because so much has come out of Detroit - but it's one of those records I've just picked up and been astounded by it. I was always really good at picking up stuff in the margins of punk history, but I'd never heard anything about this band, and I love the idea that there's still stuff out there that's going to get credit after its time; that people who didn't get credit in their lifetime eventually get it if they're good enough. You can tell this band could have gone on to be utterly amazing; there's an articulacy there, a brutality there, a real rock & roll lineage, but a little off-kilter jazz edge to little bits of the playing. And the cover's absolutely lovely, it's almost like art deco Buck Rogers. It's just one of those records that's a little surprise in life; to stay in love with music, you need to have those little surprises, something that's been locked in a vault and it comes at you and it's such a surprise. And if you're ready to take on those surprises, it just shows you're still in love with the romance of music, that something's going to hit you in the middle of the eyes. And that's what this record did to me two years ago. I found it in Spillers in Cardiff, which was good because I really don't engage in the digital world - not through any kind of arch Ludditeness or anything, I just can't be arsed. So I listen to lots of radio and read lots of press and that's how I get my new records. That's why I love going to Spillers; sometimes there'll just be that bit of advice behind the counter. "Why don't you try this?" I just love that moment."

"Like with the Slade live album, I'd been to see The Who and it was quite an experience, again at the Orchid Ballroom in Purley. It's one of the most unknown venues in the country, I think, but it was the biggest ballroom in Europe and it used to hold about 5000 people. It was huge, and you wouldn't even know it was there when you drove past; it was just a doorway, in Purley. And I think The Who had just come back from America where they'd been doing Tommy. So it was Townshend in his white boiler suit and nailing Keith Moon's drums down before the set, and The James Gang opening. I'm not sure when Live At Leeds came out, whether it was before or after that, but I just remember how amazing the album was because it had all of those pull-outs and receipts and photographs and things. I was sitting on the train and looking at the record and really hoping that people would think I was in the record business and that I'd received this white label with a load of bills. But again I'd seen them play that sort of show, and I think Live At Leeds really was them at the top of their game. As a live band they'd really pulled together and they'd done their homework. They'd done enough and they'd really nailed how to put it together on stage. For me they didn't do a better live thing. Tommy I liked, but I thought a lot of it was unnecessary and went on a bit, and it was a bit more Who than I wanted, in some cases. The real thing that always stuck with me with this record is where they do the jamming stuff and Townshend takes off on that discordant thing, and the dynamics and atmosphere are liable to go up and down, taking it from this raging onslaught of rock down to this level of almost subtlety, and then to build it up again from that. They're good dynamics, and those are often hard to find. There's something about that sound they got as well: not so much as a band but just the guitar sound. It was very clean and there was a lot of clarity. And the drums: the sound never changes, but the dynamics of what he does have peaks and troughs."

"We all lived in a house together and I remember hearing David putting the finishing touches on that one in his bedroom. He wasn't a pianist, but he could change chords and have a rhythmic thing going. The lyrics on that one really got my attention, 'Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow' and all that. But it wasn't really until we got into the studio and got Rick Wakeman in on piano… I mean, David just told him to treat it as a piano piece, like a long solo all the way through. Rick's like a virtuoso so he just went to town on it! Then we had to pull something together to go with that. We had mapped it out a little bit because we already knew there would be a string arrangement that Mick had done on it, so I went through the string arrangement and knew what I could and couldn't do. I knew the ballpark. It still needed to be a solid beat, but kind of a futuristic-meets-classic rock thing because of the strings being so overpowering and Rick's playing was more classical than rock. I think the lyrics were very John Lennon-inspired – 'I am the egg man' sort of thing. There was a concept behind the song, but it wasn't that obvious. It was like painting a picture. He did actually give us a brief description, that it was about a girl who was dissatisfied with life and was always dreaming of another place that's better, but didn't know where it was or how to get there – maybe Mars… maybe Mars is the place? We did it three times in the studio and, when you are recording, you finish and you all stay silent as possible, you don't even sneeze because it will cause problems with the mixing later, but on that third time, the phone rang. We didn't even know there was a phone in the studio! It was one that was used by session musicians to ring out on, but it had never rang before. It rang all over the end of the song. It was a really pleasurable experience listening to it after it had been mixed for the first time. I think this might be my all-time favorite of Bowie's tunes."

"I can remember being introduced to this album at a very specific moment. I went round to my friend's house, and I think my sister had the CD and put it on, and I heard the introduction to 'Lithium' and those drums and I just thought: ""What the hell is this?"" It was the most exciting thing I'd ever heard. It was like that for a lot of people of course, I was no different. But it was very shortly after we heard that that my friend got a drum kit and my brother got a guitar, and my brother had a bass, and I knew that all I had to do was pick up that bass and we had a band. Nirvana were a three-piece and there were three of us. You didn't have to play very well, and you could play the same thing quietly and then play it loudly and that was kind of a revelation for a little kid. That was all Nirvana ever did and created the most amazing feelings with it. It was a very powerful thing to put into the hands of a little teenager. It's really easy to get together. You just all need to play the same thing on these three instruments and it will work, and you will sound like a band and that's so empowering. In terms of my musical style, Cobain has a really good way with melody and he doesn't really sing very obvious things. He always comes down on the major or minor third of a chord, and it really colours the music both positively and negatively in a way that not a lot of melodies do. The aggression in it and the fact that it can be tender in one moment and then the opposite the next is something which happens in my music. The emotional intensity of Nirvana is something which I definitely think my band is probably guilty of, in terms of high emotional stuff happening. They are really interesting, just in terms of the fact that there's so much depth in it, despite it being very simple, and the lyrics don't actually mean anything, and yet you can get so affected by Nirvana in such a strange way - not necessarily just because of Kurt's story, but because there is something in the music and it's very difficult to describe."