"It's a film that my parents introduced me to when I was younger that's by a director called Pasolini. It's a black and white film about the life and times of Jesus Christ. The only words on screen are words from the Bible. So it's a quite direct representation of that particular gospel story, according to Matthew, but it's a really inventive film. The director may have taken the story direct from the Bible, but what he does with the music and editing, as well as the use of non-actors in the film, it's just a really original and moving film. It features scenes where at points you're hearing a gospel song by Odetta, and she's singing a song called, 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child' which is this amazing gospel tune. She's singing that to accompany scenes of the children being killed by Herod. The music in the film is very raw. It'll use a song that's going to spell something out literally. I don't know how Pasolini chose all these songs for the film or who was in charge of the music selection. You've got Blind Willie Johnson - the old blues artist - accompanying some of the miracle scenes where people are getting their sight back. It's an exercise in juxtaposing very disparate elements that actually really enhance each other. You have to second guess it though, because of the way it's edited, a scene will suddenly just be chopped really harshly, and the film will move on to something else. All of these things are very powerful - and unusual - devices in film-making. In a way, if it's not too pretentious to say it, some of that harsh editing and juxtaposing with disparate elements on screen with music is something that I feel inspired by in terms of making a record. Things don't always have to fit together neatly, or as you'd expect them to. If you think about it in terms of the Alex Chilton record I mentioned earlier, that album is kind of a guide through rock & roll, country and soul music or Americana if you like, and this one is a guide to raw, blues and gospel as well as a classical take on the gospel. It's a very eclectic soundtrack with music that definitely enhances what's going on on the screen. It's very powerful music in its own right."

"Raw Power for me is the greatest rock & roll record of all time. I wish Bruce Dickinson [executive producer of controversial 1997 remix attempt] had never got his paws on it. I loved the original mixes, because that’s how it should sound – the guitars are miles too loud for a normal record you’d think, but just the way the guitars come in it’s perfect. I was watching this thing on telly about Vikings disembowelling people and it’s almost like that. The guitars have angles. People go on about Exile On Main Street, which is a blues record with no tunes, but Raw Power is unbelievable. I bought it just for the cover and the titles on it. ‘Search and Destroy’, ‘Gimme Danger’ - it was right up my strasse. I was 13 or 14. I loved Iggy when I was younger, still do. I can do without all the more Motörhead stuff – he’s lost some of the finesse now. But what a song ‘Gimme Danger’ is – none of the songs hang about. Every second is important. His voice influenced the way I sang a lot. Whenever we played America Iggy would turn up, and we got on fairly good speaking terms. We were playing in New York. It was like a football changing room backstage. I was having a slash – probably in the shower, and I heard someone. I walked out – obviously not with my knob out – and it was Iggy with a tight leather jacket and blue suede shoes. He looked fantastic, and I said, ""what are you doing here?” And he said, “I always come and see your shows.”"

"Basically, after that Ali Hussan Kuban revelation, I started searching high and low for as much of this music as I could possibly find. And then I started looking further. I started googling musicians in the Nile. For me, I found that it was only music from Nubia that had a certain thing about it. Arabic music, from further north, I love it and it's beautiful. I listen to a lot of that but it's more refined than Nubian music. That's not to say that Nubian music isn't sophisticated, but there's something a bit more direct about the Nubian stuff. A bit more punk-rock. I was looking for this music, and I found Mahmoud Fadl. There were these albums called Drummers of the Nile. It's slightly instructional in that they name a rhythm and then they play the rhythm. It's quite a journey through that whole type of music. This track 'Shofna Gamar', it's a pentatonic melody. Jimi Hendrix, the blues, R&B - a lot of stuff comes from pentatonic scales and it feels to me that these Nubian rhythms are the roots of our rhythmic appreciation. One of the big things in Melt Yourself Down was, if I take these ancient rhythms and just change the aesthetic of them so they sound modern, would it feel like modern music? It does. So I came to the conclusion that there's something in these rhythms that we really respond to and I think the same with pentatonic scales, I've always been really drawn to them. So 'Shofna Gamar' is an amazing way of making pentatonic scales feel really fresh, so joyful."