"London Calling is probably my favourite rock record of all time. It’s incredibly powerful and diverse, it’s social, political and has all sorts of musical genres - punk, rock, ska, ballads, jazz and dub - rolled into the song arrangements. The Clash were at their peak when they made it and the kick-off track is the most anthemic song they ever wrote. It’s got everything, brilliant lyrics, a brilliant performance, it just sounds killer and Mick Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal, when you hear that guitar riff it’s like a fire alarm going off. ‘London Calling’ is like a call to arms, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it, it’s that powerful. I went to see them on that tour at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and it was absolutely rammed. The second they started playing the entire room started jumping up and down and I thought the building was going to collapse, you could feel the whole place shaking. It was an old theatre and I was watching from the balcony, thinking we should maybe get to a safer location but I became so immersed in the music I forgot about it, it was a fantastic show. There were obviously differences between the British and US punk bands and some of that is in the sound of the records. The British records had a bit of a darker sound to them and that could be due to technical stuff in the mastering, but a lot of it had to do with the performances. To me, the British bands have always been ground-breaking, as a whole there were better new wave and punk bands coming out of the UK than the US, it was like the second British invasion. There was a great scene in New York, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were ground-breaking at the time, but England, a country with a much smaller population than the US, had a larger percentage of iconic bands from that era."

"This is probably my absolute favourite record ever made. I remember driving to my friend's house and he put 'The Sad Skinhead' on I remember thinking, ""What the hell was that?"" When he said it was Faust, I had heard of them but had no idea what they sounded like. I remember going off and trying to 'find' the band on my own – I wanted to discover them for myself and not have people tell me which was the best record, or which were the best songs to listen to. I wanted to go off and discover Faust for myself. It was when I listened to Faust IV from beginning to end that I was absolutely blown away. It's playful, it's beautiful, it's exciting – it starts with a 10-minute Krautrock song and then goes into this weird, all-over-the-place song which has no rules. And I love that. The conviction of it is tongue-in-cheek in places, which I am almost jealous of - it even ends with a song called 'It's A Bit Of A Pain'! For me it has the best attitude of any album I have heard. Also, I must mention the extraordinary sound of everything – the placement of all the little weird guitar parts. It's almost like you can close your eyes and pinpoint where everything is coming in. There is so much I love about the record but its attitude is the most prevalent thing. I hope it has seeped into my music. It's what I try go for when I am in the studio – to try and record in as short amount of time, so that I can achieve a sense of spontaneity. I cannot achieve that during lengthy recording sessions – it would iron all of that stuff out. For me, recording really quickly means you can keep some of that playful attitude that I so love on this record."