"I discovered this band by reading an article about them in the NME of all places! Sometimes they would review things that were interesting. I bought that record, and then bought all the other records. The thing I loved about Accelerator though, was that it was just so loud, but also full of these pop hooks. It reminded me a bit of There's A Riot Goin' On, being played by a rock band or something! They have big choruses and loads going on in the music and these people trying to making an original-sounding pop record. It's also about pop music as well, and television personalities and film stars. It's a strange record that's interested in the process of making records. They said that they'd made an album that was a tribute to the 60s called Thank You and then one for the 70s called Sweet 16, and then this was their tribute to the 80s. It doesn't really sound like that, but they wanted it to maybe act like a tribute to the excesses of the 80s, and it came out as this like weird, heavily compressed, raw, funk record. I liked it so much that I then got to see them live on that Accelerator tour in Brighton, and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. It was really interesting watching their dynamic."

"The Cure was my favourite band. The Cure covered my walls, they were on the T-shirts I wore, Robert Smith was who I was going to marry when I grew up. At 15, that's how I defined myself. I owned all the B-sides and rarities and all the bootlegs and went to see them live whenever I could. I still look back at the Cure catalogue as one of my ultimate musical educators, especially because I feel like Robert Smith, as a songwriter, went on so many tangents and wrote so much weird shit. He was clearly a masterful pop songwriter, but he was coming up with stuff that was strange and experimental, and then stuff that was really dark and brooding, and then really funny and poppy. The Cure have this reputation as the glum, sad band, but I never experienced them that way. I experienced the music of the Cure as this adventure in songwriting. Boys Don't Cry was the first record I got, which was a great record to start with. But after that, The Top – what a weird record! Such a departure from the punky, poppy stuff. So I was totally hooked, and totally fascinated by Robert Smith as a person, by what was going on in his head. Any literary reference he made, I ran out and bought the book. I was obsessed."

"I must have played this album a billion times. They're like a combination of some 70s cop movies from America with Animal from The Muppets playing drums. The drums on it are insane. It's just so distorted. I'd never heard drums like that on a record before. It's just that combination of things which should not work and things which not be regarded as being in good taste. The brass section is almost marching music and it's almost an anti-rock record, but you can't help but love it. Our friend Sam Dook plays guitar in the live band and we went to see them last time they played, at the Concorde in Brighton, and we got to meet yer man who was very gracious and really nice. I felt almost apologetic telling him how much I liked their debut album because I get so fed up with people telling me that they think Pink Flag is the best thing since sliced bread. I apologised to him as I said it, you know. Sometimes if you're a known person and you turn up to see someone live it can seem like you're just going along because we're all pals in show business and all that crap. I wanted to show him that I knew the music and I was really a fan. I played that record to death."