"This was very, very hard to put together and I’ve left out so many great songs. I could do a list of 150 songs at least, but ‘La Femme D’argent’ really leapt out. It’s the most electronic of the songs that I’ve selected. To this day, every time I listen to Air, it makes me fall in love with electronic music but in a way that reminds me that you can marry electronic music and, let’s say, traditional instruments, especially the bass guitar. Air are absolute geniuses with basslines, they have a great tone and it’s such a good homage to Serge Gainsbourg and stuff like that. Their sense of melody and structure and building up a song is quite something. They make the best background music that you want to play louder than the conversation that you’re having. I love it for driving, if I don’t know what to listen to, I’ll probably stick on Moon Safari or Premiers Symptômes, which is an EP that’s not talked about that much. So many of their tracks - ‘La Femme D’argent’ being a strong example - are really inspiring from a production point of view. It’s all about the little world that these tracks live in, where it couldn’t be anyone but Air. Bands like Zero 7 have copied Air, but it’s just not as good. You know something has a really unique quality when if you were to try to write a song in that style, people would know straight away; it would be like, ‘Oh, that sounds like Air.’ I think there’s other bands that manage it, take The Strokes when they did Is This It - you can sound like Is This It, there’s a world that that record is in. I could literally go downstairs right now and make a song that’s like Air and people would definitely say it sounds like Air, but if I recorded a song in the style of a band that doesn’t really have a unique quality in terms of recording or production, people would say, ‘Oh, it just sounds like an indie band.’ I never go out and want to copy anything. Rather than listen to it, I basically fast on music when I’m writing and recording, because I’m afraid of subconsciously taking inspiration from somebody else. I mean, you do that any way - you can’t help it - but when I’m asked, ‘What music were you listening to when making this album?’ I tend to reply, ‘No one, really.’ Again, you can’t not listen to music as it’s everywhere, but it’s different in terms of immersing oneself. Like when I got into Scott Walker, I would just listen to his albums, Scott 1, 2, 3 and 4 all the time, but I don’t think you should do that when you’re recording your own music. A while back, I was listening to a song off the most recent Arctic Monkeys record, ‘Four Out of Five’ and it occurred to me that they obviously had been listening to Lou Reed, because there’s that one melody that sounds exactly like ‘Satellite of Love.’ The bit that goes, “Take it easy for a little while…” that’s very obviously “Satellite of Love”. It’s like, come on. They are very open about what they listen to, but that’s just lifted. I think it’s their best record, but in terms of that particular lift they were either aware of it or they were listening to Lou Reed on the tour bus or obsessed with the Bowie/Lou Reed partnership or something. Generally, I do worry about that, because people compare our songs to things. The worst is when people say ‘Shelter Song’ is just ‘Ticket to Ride’, it’s nothing like ‘Ticket To Ride', it’s got a twelve-string guitar on it, that’s like saying any guitar song sounds like Robert Johnson or the Edge or someone!"

"Johnny Marr was quite young around this time, wasn't he? And Morrissey…some people are more lyrical than others and their conversation can use the language more [stylishly]. And he must have found that it came easily to him. But how does Johnny Marr play like that! Even people who hate The Smiths agree that Johnny Marr was a genius. To be honest, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce weren't a bad rhythm section either. How did they do that quite young? I don't know. One of my older brothers was into The Smiths and we shared a bedroom so I heard a lot of their music. We would have been teens about this time. I loved the fact that they were from Manchester. I saw Andy Rourke around this time in town and it made me think 'fucking hell! It happens! I've just seen HIM! He's in this band that are totally credible, cool, has put Manchester on the map and I've just seen him walk out of the Arndale Centre!' And so yeah, we bought records and got drunk in Manchester and it felt like the town was happening at the time. The first time I saw them was on a north west television show and they did 'This Charming Man' and I was like [mouth agape]. We had had the Duran Durans and Spandau Ballets who looked great and were very glamorous and then you're confronted with these guys from Manchester – very ordinary in a way you might actually see them in Manchester but they weren't ordinary in their music. They didn't dress in clothes made by someone in Soho. It was like they got their shirts in Afflecks Palace! It was almost anti-glamour. And that felt very touchable. What do I think of Morrissey now? For me, lyrically he's still incredible. I can't say I know the last album well but I just think, like anybody who is an artist, you can tell a story a number of times and it has a freshness about it but we know Morrissey's way [by now]. I don't want to judge him but I don't really get into what he says off record because sometimes you wonder if he's taking the piss? But I don't know, I haven't really followed it. Is he doing that to create something going? Will he come back and say 'I didn't mean it like that'? Surely he must know [his recent comments around Britain First] are not a cool thing to do. But he's bizarre and thank God he's bizarre. I don't want him to be normal in any way, shape or form."