"Leonard Cohen’s records were very well produced and orchestrated; this one is produced by Bob Johnston the same guy that worked with Dylan. I really just love the title of the record because it’s Songs of Love And Hate and that puts it all into perspective and kind of defines Leonard in a way, that the music is about emotion . ‘Avalanches’ is such an amazing song. I always loved that song, but I kind of came back to it after I heard Nick Cave’s version of it, because Cave’s version is so intense and brings out all the intensity of Leonard’s version. Leonard’s version is much more understated but once you hear Nick’s, Leonard’s is equally intense without having the electric guitars and the drums and all that. Cohen’s another person I just constantly go back to for inspiration, especially these days as I’m writing more songs on my own and playing more acoustic guitar and getting deeper and deeper into the acoustic guitar. A lot of the Leonard songs are done not just on an acoustic guitar but a nylon string acoustic guitar – a real folk guitar. I just love his atmosphere. Songs of Love And Hate is full of interesting songs that cover a whole range of emotions that folkies were supposed to cover but the idea of covering songs of hate: love and hate are two sides of the very same coin. It’s hard to break his songs down because they’re so enigmatic. That’s the Cohen album I chose this week, but next week it will be a different one."

"‘Telstar’ is such a unique sounding song. On Joe Meeks’ original version of it he starts off singing in tune, but that all changes. I don’t know whether it was Geoff Goddard or someone else in the studio who translated that into “Oh, that’s the melody that you were singing”, because he’s so in between the notes, you can’t tell if it’s a G or a G sharp or an F sharp or whatever. “In terms of sound design, you can’t find a song that sounds like ‘Telstar’ - it’s completely unique. The main thing for me is there’s no lyrics in it and to create such an atmosphere in essentially what is a pop song is just brilliant. I wish I could have heard it for the first time in the ‘60s when it came out, because it sounds so ahead of its time. Even though it’s quite lo-fidelity there’s really amazing stuff in terms of production techniques that I steal all the time - like speeding up pianos to make them sound like harps or speeding up whole tracks to make them sound not like real-life or superimposed. ""During the recording of the new album it definitely inspired me as a producer, because when there’s a missing sound you can use a Joe Meek-esque mad idea, or make some conventional sound unconventional. It’s also inspiring in terms of the whole home recording thing. We still make our albums at my house. I've changed from being in my parent's house in a little box room to living in this old chapel-type building and now living in a house in the countryside. I've got a dedicated out-house to music, but it doesn't feel like a studio - it still feels like home recording and obviously Joe Meek had his own studio. Maybe he was inspired by Les Paul and Mary Ford, they always did stuff in hotel rooms, so perhaps he was inspired by that. “For the way that I work, when you feel inspired it’s incredibly important not to be limited by having to see if a studio is free. Also, you can’t underestimate the importance of having a space for the gear that you have set up, just so nothing holds you back when inspiration strikes. ""For a lot of the tracks on the new album, I’d been sitting out in the storm porch, having a cigarette and then something would come. It sounds so cheesy saying that, but it does happen. At the time you don’t really know how important it is, you sometimes think, “Should I record this?” or commit the idea or the melody to a phone recording or whatever. You don’t know whether it’s going to be any good but when we get a full song out of it, it’s like “Wow, if I hadn’t recorded that, would I have remembered it?” “With sound design and production, I do the very opposite, which is strange. When I'm getting sounds together - maybe to create a song - I’ll spend maybe three hours just recording some drums and some parts, I don’t even have a song and then at the end of it, if I’ve got nothing out of it, I just delete the project, because if there isn’t a song in there, it doesn’t matter how good the drums sound. I’d rather have the song and build the sounds around it."