"I ended up with this record because it was at that point in my teenage years when I was swapping records with my mates at school. We were all a long-haired, Afghan coat-wearing gang into Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and all those classic rock guitar bands. And Santana were almost amongst that; even when you go to albums like Abraxas and the early albums, they have a quite exotic kind of quality about them, so when Welcome came out, it was really rejected by the gang. It was like, ""Whoah! They've gone too far! What is this nonsense? We don't understand it!"" I got someone else's copy of it and I really started to sink into it. There are so many signposts in this record to the jazz world that has sustained me through the years. The first time I heard the words ""John Coltrane"" was through this record. Alice Coltrane is on the first track, which is this version of Dvořák's 'Going Home', which is adapted from his New World Symphony. It's like a classical piece played on a Mellotron. It's very dramatic and it's got nothing to do with rock music and more to do with that spiritual jazz that Alice Coltrane was knocking about. At that point, you couldn't give Alice Coltrane records away, and it's interesting that they didn't really gain currency until the late 90s. And then you've got people like Leon Thomas on the record, the guy who did the yodeling on Pharoah Sanders' records, which would lead you to his records. And John McLaughlin is on there, which would then lead you to The Mahavishnu Orchestra. Back then, you'd find these names on records and then when you were in the record shop, you'd find these names again and it all connected up like dot-to-dots. The concept of ""fusion"" throws up so many bad images because there's a load of shit there, but there's also so much good stuff as well. With this album, I opened the door expecting that rock guitar thing, but the sound of this record is fascinating: it has so much air in it and you can hear the sound of the room being pushed around. To me, this record is like audio sunshine and it transports me to some transcendental place."

"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."

"This one is an old classic: it's my foundation. Each song is a wonder. Each song tells a story. What sums it up for me is that if I'm happy I put it on and I'm even happier; if I'm sad I put it on and it makes me much happier. It has the ability to lift my mood or enhance a good mood. There's a quality of light and darkness, this association which I find really powerful and very impactful on my soul. It's a record to laugh to and to cry to. There's so much beauty. I find the string arrangements so moving. It goes so far into my being when I listen to it. It's a very big favourite and as I say a foundation to everything that I love, that hybrid. That's what is so attractive in Brazilian music: the fusion of cultures creating a new thing. That's really fascinating. It was in 2009 I think that I went on a hunt for this record, and bought it. I'd only heard certain songs; someone put some songs on my iPod a number of years ago, and then one day I realised that they were all part of a full album, which I bought when I visited Brazil some years ago, the first time that I played Brazil solo. And of course with Stereolab we were already cultivating that bit of land before we knew that it had already been cultivated and had a name and an identity. It's just an attraction, and you can't really explain them. They're doing the same thing in different parts of the world, or sometimes some things become so strong they go through your DNA somehow and you have them in your blood and they're not to be contested: they're there. But for me music has been the transformational tool. I know I've listened to records and I was one type of person before listening and after I find myself being transformed. It's the same with going to certain gigs: I walked in as one person and I walked out a different person. And I love that about music. You can't touch it, it's just there. There's a bit of a mystery behind it that makes it even more powerful."

"I’m a huge admirer of Grace Jones in many, many ways. She came out of the fashion industry, made a disco record and then went on to make three classic records that I think are some of the greatest sounding things anyone has ever put out there. Those albums were produced by Alex Sadkin and Chris Blackwell, who had worked with Bob Marley before that. We first worked with Alex Sadkin on ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ and he went on to produce Seven And The Ragged Tiger and the Arcadia album with me. So, we worked very closely with Alex and the reason we wanted to work with him at all was because of the Grace Jones album. I was so astounded when I heard the sound on Nightclubbing – the depth, quality and clarity of instrumentation and the vibe of it. I couldn’t understand how anyone had ever captured that. I needed to work with this person somehow and fortunately Alex turned out to be one of our great collaborations. Grace combined her style with a reggae influence, with a certain pop sensibility and with grooves that people could dance to and created something that only she could have done. It was entirely original and everyone in Duran Duran loves Grace Jones. We’ve played her records more than most other artists. We got to know Grace and hung out with her quite a lot. She did the Bond movie [A View To A Kill] that we were on the soundtrack for and she is did a cameo on ‘Election Day’ for Arcadia. I also think Grace is one of the most fascinating performers out there. The stuff she used to do with Jean-Paul Goude – the photography, the videos, the album covers – was so stylish. They had great taste. I truly love the songs on Nightclubbing. The original of the title track is on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot - which I love – written by Bowie and Iggy. The song had the darkest vibe you could imagine being done in Berlin during that period and that Grace took it and made it so different and beautiful was really something. Often with a cover you either like the original or the cover – with ‘Nightclubbing’ they are both great."

"Another incredible thing about Criterion is that in addition to the classics, the treasures, the widely acclaimed, they also have a true love for cult and lowbrow cinema. Director Herk Harvey explains on the Carnival of Souls commentary that they had hoped the film would have an art-house release, and they actually approached a distributor successful in that market and were told that, since it wasn’t in a foreign language, it didn’t really fit. I’m sure being American-made wasn’t the only reason this was a hard fit for distributors, but it was interesting in terms of what art houses were looking for at that time and how the filmmakers saw the film’s niche. This film taught me how to watch Mulholland Drive . . . which is to say, if you stay with the mood, without fighting it, your intuition will serve you far better than the plot and structure and logic your brain is craving. Because essentially all stories are simple; what isn’t simple is the underneath of it all. And that’s more rewarding in the end. I was on a plane about ten years ago when a businessman sat down next to me. Like most people, I dreaded having to talk to someone new. I figured he wouldn’t talk to me anyway, ’cause I have tattoos and he looked very straight-up corporate. He immediately smiled and asked me who I was, what I did for a living. I told him I made movies, but probably none he’d ever heard of. Indie movies. I figured that would shut him up so I could look out the window and mope. He smiled big—“Oh, you mean like cult movies?” I shrugged kindly—well, yeah, I guess you could say that, hopefully that. He said his sister had been in a movie when he was a youngster. A film as independent as it gets. One that had become a cult classic. Somehow I just knew what he was going to say next. His sister was not Candace but another girl in the film, and that man and I talked about Carnival of Souls for well over an hour. And then we spent the next two hours of our flight engrossed in each other as he told me vividly of the supremely radical life he’d led prior to becoming a businessman for the environment! You just never know . . ."

"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."