"The film that restored grace and poetry to Berlin and the German language after forty years of stereotypical war movies featuring stereotypical German actors playing the parts of stereotypical Germans. The fog of war had settled over Birmingham when I came along in 1960, and there was no moving it for some time. Nothing about Germany was to be trusted, as even its postwar art was tainted by the events surrounding the Holocaust, unsurprisingly. But I was glad when this movie came along, despite the awful history of the twentieth century, as it allowed me to love Germany for what it is now, its language, the sound of its spoken word and all its formidable arts. Wim Wenders must surely be Germany’s greatest living director."

"Sirk is actually a new filmmaker for me. I’ve been waiting to see one of his movies again in a theater—I sometimes do that when I feel like a filmmaker is going to be really important for me. I saw Imitation of Life for the first time two years ago, and it really blew my mind. Then I saw a print of All That Heaven Allows last year in Berlin. I’m very curious how Sirk’s films played when he was alive and what was talked about when they premiered, because they seem so revolutionary to me in many ways–the social issues, especially. And obviously the colors in his movies are huge. I don’t know enough about Sirk, but I want to."

"Towards the end of the list I was getting desperate, but Paris 1919 came to me straight away - it's one of my all time favourite albums. It's like the anti-Transformer; I see it as the antithesis of that record, and I definitely have more love for Paris 1919. I think it's the best album John Cale's ever made. It's odd, because it's a poppy record, but even his poppy records have sinister overtones. And I love 'Child's Christmas In Wales'. It's a very Christmassy album. Do I play it a lot at this time of year? I'm forbidden from playing records at home. I put Berlin on at home once, and it just killed the room. I tried to make it better by playing some Motown, but the atmosphere had gone."

"It's not just an album to me; it's like a movie. It's a whole story—there's cruel, tragic storytelling. I listened to it for the first time in Berlin. Sometimes when I travel, I like to find things that relate to where I am. So I listened to this, and for the whole afternoon, I was like, Oh man. How am I going to leave the apartment? Something changed after I listened to this album. I love Lou Reed, because his voice sounds like your inner conscience. When I read a book, it's Lou Reed's voice narrating it. It's very intimate. I can't really listen to this album casually. It's like going to a museum and seeing a painting that really means something to you—a sacred moment. I don't have many albums that do that for me."

"1999 was a strange and transitional year. The second half of the ’80s and the ’90s were about dance music. That’s all there was. I remember when drum‘n’bass hit, we were, like, “Why would you want to listen to anything else?” Then that started to finish toward the end of the ’90s, and people in the underground were making records that weren’t dance music but were still credible. To Rococo Rot wasn’t just about playing, it was about machines as well. They somehow embodied both Krautrock and post-rock in an interesting and Berlin way. When Wire did our tour in 2000, we were two dates in and we started to notice that that every venue was playing Soundgarden before our sets. We had a copy of The Amateur View, and our sound person would put that on and just calm the audience down."