"The thing about that record is that it had an honesty that rock & roll had been missing. The 80s were a terrible time when guitars didn't sound like guitars and there were drum machines, but then all of a sudden here comes this group, Guns N' Roses who plug in their guitars and just didn't mess around with any fancy stuff. And the songs were undeniable! 'Welcome To The Jungle' is an undeniable song in the same way that 'Satisfaction' has that great riff with the lyrics on top of it. Great lyrics, great imagery, and as soon as you heard that high-pitched voice that harkened back to a Robert Plant-ish approach to singing, which hadn't been heard in quite a while… Well, it still works today. That's got to be coming up to 30 years old, but you put that on today if it was a brand new band, I would say, 'Who's that?' That intro is almost symphonic, and it just defined the band. You hear that song, and then the rest of the album follows through. 'Welcome To The Jungle' is head, hands and feet above the other material. Bands have a few songs that just stand up, you know? You think Thin Lizzy, you think 'The Boys Are Back In Town'. You think the Stones, you think 'Satisfaction'. You think Led Zeppelin, you think 'Stairway To Heaven'. There are just certain songs that, either because of the melody or lyric or the sound of the song, intrinsically say, ""This is what that is"". The only band who doesn't have that thing, just because they have so many god damn good songs, is The Beatles. I don't know if [us influencing them] is the case. We never paid attention to anything. There can be scenes or not and people can be influenced or not, but at the end of the day you are left to your own devices. When you think about it, The Beatles were influenced by Motown, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, etc. but then when you hear The Beatles, it's their own stuff. It's like cooks. Everybody uses salt, everybody uses vegetables, there is nothing unique, but how you mix up those elements makes it yours or not. If you can grab a style, I think it has to do with talent. Everybody cooks, but few people are cooks."

"This is Emmanuel Mario, who I met in Toulouse thanks to Julien Gasc. Julien also does his own great records and is part of Aquaserge. I could have put Aquaserge in the list, because they would totally fall into this category of people who've been working very hard for many years and who eventually make a masterpiece. But they're all part of a group of people in Toulouse who I finally met. I say finally, because I left France absolutely appalled that I couldn't meet anyone that could mirror my taste and my desire to make music. So I immigrated to this country, for the music, and of course I had met Tim, so it made a lot of sense. In France it was impossible. But anyway in 2003 or 4 I came across this group of people who were all incredibly talented and sexy and good-looking and had no big egos, and with no shame about what they were doing, exposing their vision. There were a lot of complexes in the French music scene which got better later on, but to me these people were like, wow, I've found my brothers and sisters, it was absolutely wonderful. So Emmanuel became a long-time collaborator and he's very good at working with other people, but there was also a desire to do his own stuff. He was kind of doing it before he started working on this project, but then I guess he found his focus and made this incredible piece of work. From one track to another you're transported to very different countries, but it's also very familiar to Emmanuel, and I find that to be a real strength: to have such a variety of different styles, but still be familiar and to have some similarity. He reaches really far out to find certain tracks and to bring them back to a whole. I think it's a brilliant album musically and also for its variety. It also tells a story, about the Kerguelen Islands, which were discovered by this French captain. He was sent to go and find new islands and new places to conquer, and I think he was trying to conquer these islands but they're not conquerable. There's too much wind and it's too hostile. But he said that they were worth conquering; he lied about those islands and was treated like a hero, but eventually the truth came out."