"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."

"My whole thing has gone playlist now, so I'll have this on my headphones now as I walk around because sitting down to listen to two sides of vinyl is less frequent in my life. But certainly when I bought Live Evil, it was the only record that I played for months! And quite deeply so. A friend had lent me an album on CBS, which had an inner sleeve and on this inner sleeve would be descriptions of other records. And on one of them was a journalist wordily describing this as something like, ""… an exploration of a sonic journey"", and that really set my imagination off. And the cover of Live Evil is fantastic. It just looked like a fascinating object, and it was a double album as well. It was a high-risk purchase. But playing this record, it was like, ""Wow! What is this amazing, glowing world?"" And it had these Hermeto Pacoal tracks on it that are really ambient – 'Nem Un Talvez' is one and 'Little Church' is the other – and those tracks really got me. Back then there was no particular place to start listening with what would become ambient music. There were pieces that were beatless but these were deeply coloured and were way before Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze records, which we didn't have much patience for. But there's so much bursting out of this record. Most of it is recorded live and the fact that John McLaughlin was on it really makes it for me, and he's just an amazing artist and guitarist. On this record, he's free as a bird and it's just mental. He just lights up this record. [Keyboardist] Keith Jarrett's on it, and he's a particularly complicated improviser. I jumped into that world and the ripples from diving into that pond, I just follow them. All the people that played on that record came out of Miles Davis' world."

"Dare was amazing. It came out around the same time as Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. You can't not mention Soft Cell, and you can't not mention Gary Numan either, in popularising electronic music. I'd seen The Human League perform at Eric's in front of three people - me, Jane Casey and some drunk lying on the floor - and it was in the Martyn Ware era, with Phil Oakey looking amazing with his asymmetric haircut, and the fabulous slides and the little constructed archways which had the synthesizers, which looked - I suppose - rather Kraftwerk. And you know, ""Listen to the voice of Buddha"" [on 'Being Boiled'], the Travelogue album, was amazing and groundbreaking in many ways. It was not commercially successful at all, and I remember in particular their version of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' being incredible. But when Dare came, it was an attempt at global pop superstardom and ABBA-ness, as well as being groundbreaking and electronic. It was time I became aware of the Linn drum machine, and the programming on that album is fantastic. The engineer Dave Allen at night time would be editing instrumentals together and that became The League Unlimited Orchestra album [1982's Love And Dancing], which was also incredible to dance to in seedy gay nightclubs, which I also did [laughs]. I was then more aware of technology by this point and had been working in a recording studio with the TR-808 drum machine which, although a plastic instrument, seemed slightly paltry to the meaty sounds of the sampled bass and snare of Dare, which was the Linn LM-1. It sounded like a real drummer but obviously wasn't and was intrinsic to the sound of that album. My favourite was 'Love Action', not 'Don't You Want Me', which is always cited and is the most successful. 'Love Action' was always the one for me."

"This album is fucking awesome. Right from the moment I heard it. I discovered Iggy and the MC5 through the NME in 1976, after I saw the Sex Pistols in June of '76, and was reading about it. That was the place to go to find out about gigs and whatever. A family friend of mine who was a bit older than me, he was fantastic at finding this stuff, he was the guy that actually took us to the show, Ian – his brother Neil was about my oldest friend, and he took us down there. That is an experience in itself. And then you find out without doubt Iggy really is the godfather of punk. That's one of the best titles. You hear about J.B. being the godfather of soul; Iggy without doubt is the godfather of punk. Again, what's brilliant about Fun House is the engineering, the sound is so heavy, it's just magnificent. His voice, the grooves, everything about it, it's as great as it was when it was released. It – will – never – die. This is an eternal record. I think I might have freaked Iggy out a little. He did a small show in Cannes, during the film festival. It was a tiny gig, but he was awesome. And I'm standing in the front of the audience, literally singing along to every word. He played most of the stuff from that thing, and I don't think he knew who I was or anything, but I'm like bobbing my head, going nuts, it was the first time I'd ever seen him perform live; he's such a great live performer. Obviously the music I make isn't influenced by it, but that doesn't mean to say you can't love it. I have a profound respect for him. I even love Raw Power – the sound is very odd on Raw Power, but that's what's kind of great about it, it sounds so weird. But Fun House is the one that just encapsulates them for me."