"Trevor Nelson had a show on Radio 1 called Rhythm Nation, and every Thursday night he would play all this music that would literally become my musical education. Again, it helped me understand myself on a new level. I got introduced to the neo-soul era through him; a lot of the Philadelphia artists like Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, and D’Angelo. ""I just love D’Angelo. He’s a musical genius. His gentleness was something that really stood out to me, as did Lauryn Hill’s. It was a real subtlety to what he was doing – very considered in where the notes went, and what word was used. At the same time, it was then like a jam! He really nailed this sweet spot in between virtuoso and jamming. ""When I was in Glasgow, my first ever record deal was signed to this guy called Souljawn. He was a massive soul fan, and he said ‘Oh, I found this snippet online of D’Angelo’s new album!’ It was literally a two-minute, really scratchy clip of him singing this song, 'Real Love'. We’d all wondered where he’d gone, ‘cause it had been six years in between albums! We were up there in Glasgow obsessing over this two-minute clip, playing it over and over and over again! Like with 'My Love is Your Love' there was this want and need for music, and real appreciation of when it’s going to come. The willingness to wait for it – it had been six years and we were willing to wait another six ‘cause we just appreciated his genius so much! ""When his most recent album finally came out, the song was there, fully finished. It was so rewarding and satisfying to hear it all finished. To finally hear it now, and still love it… only D’Angelo! He’s incredible. ""I saw him at the Roundhouse recently and he really blew me away. He inspires me to learn more instruments, and to also just relax in music and allow more of an artistic spirit to come through – to not try and control things too much. It was really cool how he went offstage: each musician would slowly walk off and then he was left there, on his Rhodes piano. Playing piano is one thing, but playing a Wurlitzer or a Rhodes is a different, softer approach. He’s really inspired me to look into more of that jazz-soul realm on that instrument."

"I think this is the first Byrds album I owned. I bought it because it had all the singles on it. When I was a kid I didn't have a lot of money so I'd probably go and buy a band's greatest hits album, just to give a taste of the band – I love singles and greatest hits albums. I love this record because every time I hear it, it's joyous, it's transcendental and it makes my spirit soar. Whenever the Beatles and Byrds released 45s, they were all in mono because they were more powerful in terms of mixes. I watched repeats of Ready Steady Go! in the mid-'80s and was entranced by performances of 'Mr Tambourine Man', and also when The Beatles covered it too. The Byrds helped us dream away the greyness and bleakness of Glasgow and the repressiveness of Thatcherist Britain. The Byrds are better than The Beatles for me. I'm more of a Stones guy myself, but The Byrds just portrayed this image of beautiful Californian transcendent sound. That run between '65 and '67 in this compilation of A-sides and B-sides is unbeatable. I almost don't want to use this word, but it's a perfect record and basically formed the foundation of Primal Scream."

"Lisa Helps the Blind were Belle and Sebastian before they were Belle and Sebastian, a very early incarnation of the band when it was mainly the two Stuarts - Murdoch and David. I used to put on bands at this place in Glasgow called The 13th Note, there’d be a Tuesday night where anybody could play and then a Thursday night for groups who maybe were a little bit more together. “Stuart Murdoch came down a couple of times and he’d sometimes play at acoustic nights there too. I think I put on one show when they were still Lisa Helps the Blind. What I remember more than anything else was how quietly Stuart would sing, to the point that you could barely hear him over the general level of chatter in the room. I think he was very frustrated at the time, because it wasn’t in his nature to make a scene and force people to listen; he wanted them to pay attention because they appreciated the songs, you know? He was clearly a great melodic songwriter, but that track especially... “I’ve got that demo tape somewhere, in a box and it’s been there for the last two or three times I’ve moved house. I wish I could find the bloody thing because I love that version of the song. It’s quite different from the Belle and Sebastian recording that came out later, on the 3...6...9 Seconds of Light EP. I don’t want to diss that version, but the Lisa Helps the Blind one was slower and felt a little bit more lovingly crafted. I just thought, ‘Whoa, there’s something special going on here with this guy and his writing.’ “The lyrics weren’t like anything I’d heard before - the imagery he was using was both extremely profound and extremely non-rock and roll, this song from the perspective of a guy who’s going to church and fantasising about this rather plain-looking girl who is resenting being in church herself. I fell in love with the quirkiness and contrariness of it, but there was also a quiet self-assurance to it that I’ve admired about Stuart ever since. “I was in one of Belle and Sebastian’s early press photos too, they didn’t appear in them themselves in those early days. That was a very specific time in 1996, after Tigermilk and before If You’re Feeling Sinister. Stuart just stopped me on Byres Road one day, when I was out on my bike. I look so chuffed, because I loved that bike more than anything else in the world. I took a train out to Helensburgh and bought it from this guy who’d bought it new in 1948 and cycled to work on it every day of his life until he retired. It was this really heavy, beautiful old Raleigh. “I was away on tour one time and the landlady of my flat on Bank Street in Glasgow cleared out the garage and she chucked it out. It was so heart-breaking! Anyway, the photo is from a period when the band were being bashful but also playing games with the press at the same time, which was funny. Stuart was a great photographer, you’d always see him around town with his camera.”"

"I got to love this album when I was 18, working in a second hand clothes shop in Glasgow, where one of the guys I worked with played it constantly. It was the first time I had heard music that felt like genuine contemporary protest music. The combination of Chuck D’s informed eloquence and unashamed confrontational stance was so potent. Here was a guy name-checking Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the same breath as Coltrane and Anthrax. It was revolutionary in every sense. It felt dangerous. These guys had the FBI tapping their phones and were taking on the behemoth of the US establishment. While in retrospect the S1Ws may be the campest paramilitaries in history, the imagery of guerrilla conflict intensified the sense of resisting persecution. Like the best groups, it felt like a gang, too. Flav the joker, Chuck the boss, Terminator-X voiceless, but ever-present. Tight. Then there was the music. That fragmented repetition. Those bursts of brass and breakbeats, squealing like sirens against stolen guitars. Amazing. It didn’t sound like anything else. While Chuck D and his cartoon foil Flavor Flav had the lyrical articulacy, Terminator-X, Professor Griff and the Bomb Squad matched it musically. Their imagination was in context – how to take something from its original context, place it against something else out of context to create something way more powerful than either in isolation. In many ways, I still see this LP as the pinnacle of rap. Of course it is of its time and sonic trends advanced, but for sheer inventiveness and lyricism it has never been matched. It felt like rap was violently booting the world into a better direction – a brief flash of genius before it became mired in the vocabulary of egoism, misogyny and avarice. There have been great pinnacles since, but nothing matches this moment."