"I discovered Fassbinder senior year of college, and I couldn’t believe it. Both of these films are perfect to me. Ali tells a grotesque yet delicate love story that, to my dummy liberal arts mind, was an analogy for the challenges of a gay relationship in the repressed Germany of the 1970s (at least that’s what I said in my thesis). Maria Braun is the tragic, triumphant story of a woman who does what she must to get by, but loses herself in the process. They both make you wanna dress up and smoke opium and fuck people you meet late at night in a bodega, even if you’re not into that."

"I discovered Fassbinder senior year of college, and I couldn’t believe it. Both of these films are perfect to me. Ali tells a grotesque yet delicate love story that, to my dummy liberal arts mind, was an analogy for the challenges of a gay relationship in the repressed Germany of the 1970s (at least that’s what I said in my thesis). Maria Braun is the tragic, triumphant story of a woman who does what she must to get by, but loses herself in the process. They both make you wanna dress up and smoke opium and fuck people you meet late at night in a bodega, even if you’re not into that."

"The more I read about the Tropicalia movement, the more it influenced me. I admired the way they worked against a military dictatorship. The official artists, playwrights and poets got together and put on full-on shows rather than just play gigs. They'd put on theatrical events with a theme or have a provocative backdrop that would get them arrested! It's a portal into so many worlds, like when Rogério Duprat had been studying with Stockhausen in Germany and bringing this back to Brazil, Can would also have influenced him in Germany and maybe someone like Cornelius Cardew who was like a British outpost. There's an amazing story about Cardew touring when he eventually turned against Stockhausen and wanted to bring his music to the people. He decided to tour the Isle of Anglesey in 1970 with the Scratch Orchestra and he got kids throwing stones at him during his gigs. Anyway, they ended up recording a few records in Brazil and this is one I play quite a lot, especially a song called 'Relance'. It's a few years after the Tropicalia explosion but Costa comes across really powerfully; it's like the artwork almost points to the Slits artwork but a few years beforehand. She comes across like a really powerful personality and there's a really unusual musicality on the record. This song ['Relance'] has a really heavy rhythm but it's driven by an accordion, which I usually find really off-putting but it seems to make sense here."