"The appeal here is exactly what we were talking about with the last song - it's just pure rock and roll and it sounds so good. It's what I call 'lake music'. I don't know if you guys go to the lake out there, but in Texas, that's what we'd do. The lake was about twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes from my hometown, and the whole way there, you're blasting exactly this kind of music - loud, raw, uncompromising rock. I love anything that makes me feel that way. There's nothing subtle about this track; those massive ringing chords that it begins and ends with? Come on, you only have to hear the chorus once before you know it, but I still love the lyrics - what a great way to write about a place that you loved, but have left. ""I'm Detroit bored and razed / but these days I'm living with another."" That's so well put."

"I found out in my thirties that Barbara Kopple’s effort is considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made. At the time of its release, I only knew that she had all but recorded my own life as a union organizer—the cold breaking dawn of the picket line each morning, sniper shots fired by company thugs, all completely unseen by the mainstream media. I was in Detroit, Compton, Louisville—she was in Harlan. We both lived on scraps. I slept with a shotgun at my side, sang our strike songs until my voice was raw. The ’70s were the last great militant era of American labor, but back then, we were just amazed to be able to fight one more day. Kopple’s characters were my comrades across the hollow, so to speak—and these Brookside women weren’t beauty pageant winners, either. They were the toughest leaders I’ve ever known. The most charismatic feminist icon of those years for me wasn’t Gloria Steinem—it was Lois Scott, a Brookside strike leader, drawing out a .38 from under her blouse, concealed in her bra."

"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."

"There isn't really one definitive album in that series. We were completely addicted to those Electro albums when they first came out. One of us had one album and we used to trade them between the lot of us. I bought Electro 2 and I was a bit pissed off at the time, but it's one of my favourites now. Electro 5 has got some of the best tunes on it. And Crucial Electro has got 'Clear' by Cybertron, which is amazing. Jerry Calliste, Jr. is a genius I think. He was the man behind 'Al Naafiysh' and High-Fidelity Three's 'B Boys Breakdance'. That's one of my favourite tunes on Electro 5. 'Breaker's Revenge' [by Arthur Baker] is a killer. Beat Street – the film and the soundtrack – was huge for me. I was a terrible breakdancer. Embarrassingly bad. I had a couple of moves and I could barely do those, but I loved the culture of it. UK Electro was also a key record – I found out recently that it's all by one guy. It's perhaps easy to see this in retrospect, but there are lots of parallels between Detroit and Sheffield and Manchester. I can remember looking out at the cooling towers from my bedroom window. They were maybe two miles away. You could see a big urbanised bit to the side of it. It made the landscape magical listening to that music. I think this was probably what Kraftwerk were getting at originally. Talking about it now it seems obvious, but it adds magic to your own mundane landscape. You need that. That's what happened with Detroit techno. You've got this utterly bleak landscape and the only way to make it palatable is to lend it some kind of majesty. I think we were very lucky growing up when we did. We had lots of momentous moments. Things are very fractured now. Back then, everybody had an opinion on something like Star Wars – especially boys, well, men now. We all have this notion that we were privy to something amazing. It's very rare now that something is that omnipresent. The whole thing with the electro scene was that it was a bit left of centre. I got a lot of stick for it at school. I can see why, looking back now. It was such a huge thing. It pushed you in a certain direction. I've grown up a bit now, but it used to be quite extreme. Y'know, like, "If you don't share my taste in music you can fuck off.""