"""It was a more intense injection of it. That was the second solo album, before the second Wu Tang album, and you can still hear that hunger in RZA's production. It's even more intense and claustrophobic. I didn't buy this album until six years after I discovered the Wu Tang, and it threw me again, I was obsessed with it. I used to have it on in the car all the time and I would stop it and go back to a little bit, then stop it and go back to another little bit, thinking about how I could replicate that, because it was so good. This was well after I came up with Sleaford Mods, just before I met Andrew. It was still so mind blowing. There was a theme to it, they always used to bang on about how it was a concept but I never got that. 'Guillotine' was my favourite one off it, and also 'Incarcerated Scarfaces'. The first one has this Keystone Cop kind of beat. It's bizarre, there's almost an Irish thing to that. It was east coast, you've got a lot of Irish immigrants there, so it must have spread through the culture. I used samples for the first four albums, or tried to, but I don't do it any more. It was just so tired to me, I'd rather leave sampling to those classic albums than flog a dead horse, you know. I was aware of the fact that it was an uphill battle trying to get clearance for stuff, but after three or four albums I was also getting bored of it, trying to find a loop off a great track. It didn't matter how obscure it was or how obscure the approach was, it just bored me and I needed something more home grown."""

"For me, this is very much a hallmark of where I was able fit in musically in my career. When I started out I was in Montreal, but went to New York periodically and failed miserably with what I was trying to do. It was right at the time that Jeff Buckley was on the rise, and grunge, and that whole movement was incredibly heterosexual, incredibly nihilistic, incredibly guitar-based and very, very dark. I admired it, I'm not against that, but when I was dropped into that equation I was this gay piano-playing opera queen who wanted to be romantic and harken back to other more refined eras. What I was trying to do just didn't make any sense in New York. People would often try to categorise me and say I was cabaret or that I should be doing Broadway. It was very complicated and I never figured it out. Then I was signed to Dreamworks, by Lenny Waronker – whom I believe helped make Pet Sounds. I went to Los Angeles and suddenly realised that I was definitely more part of the Brian Wilson tradition. Whether it was him or Randy Newman or Van Dyke Parks or Harry Nilsson, there was a kind of spot that I could fit into. So I listened a lot to Pet Sounds. You can hear it somewhat on my new album, songs like the last track 'Alone Time', but all through my career there's been a real concentration on harmonies and interesting chord changes and a dreamlike quality. I was able to find my niche through that tradition, as opposed to the East Coast. I have a lot to thank Brian Wilson for, he allowed me to inhabit my world comfortably, as opposed to when I was in New York and I was a total anathema to what was happening there. I can't say that I listened to the album obsessively or that I'm obsessed with him and know all his work, but I definitely feel I am a Wilsonite."