"… the first time I owned an album of my very own. I didn't pay for it with my pocket money, my sister Clare got given it by a boyfriend and she passed it on to me immediately. The Hipgnosis cover with the black and gold solarisation and the amp - it's a classic record sleeve. It's just a really brilliant album, a bridging album between the Tyrannosaurus Rex years and the full-on commerciality of Fly, and 'Telegram Sam' and 'Hot Love'. There's a great poster of Marc looking supercool in his Maida Vale flat with a mirror in the shape of a guitar, and illustrations of him by George Underwood, who famously went to school with David Bowie and punched him in the eye, causing 'the Bowie eye'."

"In terms of performances, I still watch that film and am stunned by Robert De Niro. It’s such a carefully studied performance and he’s extraordinary in that movie. I watch it just for the glee, even though it’s quite a dark film — I watch it and I love him in that film, it’s just like watching someone do an amazing guitar solo. But I also love Scorsese’s sort of sleight of hand in that movie; the way that the story is told, every performance in the film from Peter Boyle and Cybill Shepherd, and everyone in between –Scorcese himself in that awful, cokey, monstrous revenger in the back of that car. It’s like watching a very slow car crash and there is great value in that, I think."

"This was the point where Steve Miller set up his own studio and started recording in his own time. He lost himself in that process. I love his take on music – it's his own brand of psychedelia. It's very blissful on one hand, very groovy on the other. He created his own musical world and almost ends up referencing himself rather than taking influences from other people. I love it when an artist has a feedback loop to their own music. The first track, 'Song For Our Ancestors', is the one for me. It's soundtrack-y, incredibly evocative. It starts with a giant foghorn and this beautiful tremolo guitar that seems to emerge from the mists. Again, it's taking you somewhere, imagining this other world, albeit rooted in history rather than just imagination."

"All of his albums are just collections of songs because this was in the pre-album era, but I guess there was one in Mississippi called Key To The Kingdom. He was a spiritual blues singer who played an instrument, a fretless zither. Even though it's the blues era, he can't bend the notes like a guitar player would. He's sometimes known as George Washington Phillips. His music is really serene and otherworldly and pure. It's all very religious but it has its own atmosphere that I've not really heard anywhere else. I think when I really got into Washington Philips was when Sonic Boom put a song of his onto a compilation album called Space Lines. My sister painted a picture of him for Christmas. My sister the painting goth."

"I was the perfect age for the whole Manchester thing – 13-15 during those years when it was really big, when it peaked with the Inspirals, Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. Me and Danny [Goffey, Supergrass drummer] met at school, he was two years above me, which was a bit weird ’cos you don’t really tend to cross over years in school. I think he found out I was into music and played a bit of guitar and he’d got a drumkit for Christmas. I was into music and art, not like the village boys who were into starting fights and stuff. I remember going up to Manchester on a bus with Danny to the G-Mex to watch Happy Mondays with the Inspirals supporting, which was amazing."

"It's a beautiful record. It's the Neu/Can supergroup in a way with Jaki from Can on drums and Michael on guitar. It's the pop end of Krautrock and sounds like Utopian sports montage music or something! It evokes the future, even still, for me or my idea of what the future would be at that time. It's a record I listened to a lot in recent years and just a record that I really recommend. I wouldn't have heard any of this stuff until the early-1990s but it was something we listened to a lot of as the Super Furry Animals. I quite like listening to instrumental music as it means I can still think over it without lyrics interfering; there's a time and a place for lyrics!
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