"Like I said, I think you're only as good as your last creative output, and I think Adore Life is even better than Savages' first album. I got to see them when they were touring this record live last summer as we shared a few festival bills, and they're just phenomenal. Their show absolute punk rock & roll, but dirgey in the way you feel you've drunk too much iowaska, yet you're just at a gig. Their music is hypnotic, it's trance inducing, and Jehnny Beth is just the embodiment of rock & roll, one of the few hopes we have in British music at the moment. What I love is that so many people got behind it, yet it's still such an uncompromising album. It's work to listen to this record, you're not going to put it on and immediately have a good time, and that's important. We need challenging records."

"I vividly remember first seeing Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and being inspired by the spare craftsmanship of his cinematic style. I love the simplicity of his scenes and his dry sense of humor, but the best thing is the way he brings us in and out of edits. Each scene opens with a little bit of audio from the forthcoming scene while the shot remains black. He cuts to the action in progress, and with a primarily static frame that gives us the impression of a series of tableaux, the scene plays out before cutting—not fading—to black. The restraint of this structure is deceptively simple as it calms and amuses us, pulling us along through the story in an unfolding rhythm that parallels John Lurie’s perfect score. And of course the black-and-white landscapes of New York City are irresistible."

"""When I was in high school, I was a little rebellious,"" Levine said. ""I wanted to play music. I didn't want to do the things they were teaching me. I picked up a guitar and that was it. The second I picked up a guitar, I never really put it down again. I fell so madly in love with it, it's all I did. It consumed my every thought, and I'd have friends over that didn't even play instruments and I would just put instruments in their hands."" "I remember hearing Green Day for the first time and being kind of blown away,"" Levine continued. ""When I heard 'Longview' on the radio, I was just kind of enamored by it. I was like, 'Wow, what's this?' It was very accessible, melodic rock and roll music, but it was a little pissed-off and obnoxious."

"And then just, even like comedies of the 1980s, I mean the Three Amigos, I grew up with… It’s such a great movie. I was just talking to someone about it actually and I haven’t seen The Jerk before and we were both saying… she’s a director I just worked with and she grew up watching Three Amigos and loved, obviously, Steve Martin and Martin Short and Chevy Chase. It’s such a simple and ridiculous storyline that it just works. It’s like from the off, you’re just in on this little joke, you know. It’s so great. So I loved that when I was growing up. She was telling me The Jerk, I’d never seen The Jerk before, and I watched it a couple of weeks ago for the first time and it was, again, just really great, kind of like, SNL humor that I really love."

"I love female empowerment in pop, and there was a lot going on at the time when I think back. There was a time when women were fucking fed up of dealing with stereotypes. “I felt Destiny's Child were very much at the forefront of that, saying “Right, we're gonna have some fun now. “Bills Bills Bills” was part of that and then “Say My Name” - I'm gonna call you out. “I remember releasing “Fill Me In”, which came out the exact same week as “Say My Name” in the UK. It was my first ever number one and even though I was like “Wow” and I couldn't stop grinning, I remember I couldn't get my head around being anywhere near Destiny's Child. They were number two in the charts and it was one of my favourite tunes. Ah man, I had posters of them on my wall. It was unbelievable."

"Kwaidan is a film like no other. Adapted from Japanese legends and myths that were collected by Irish author Lafcadio Hearn, the film is an anthology of four ghost stories. The superstitiousness of Irish culture clearly influenced Hearn’s recording of these tales, and to see these stories adapted again by a Japanese artist is fascinating. I think Kobayashi poured his soul into this project. Kwaidan, in every way, bleeds Japanese culture and identity: not a loud and obnoxious nationalistic pride, but a thoughtful and considered love and respect for its heritage. Toru Takemitsu provides an austere and haunting score using traditional Japanese instruments and warped sound effects. The majority of the film is shot on a soundstage and features strikingly, often eerily painted backdrops. This was Kobayashi’s first color project, and cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima uses light, a 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and refined camera movement to astonishing effect."