"The reason I love this record, apart from it being an absolutely incredible record, is that up until hearing Marquee Moon I wrote songs on my own and when it came to putting things together with a band, I would always have in my mind that I would play chords and then break for a solo and then have some more chords. A friend of mine who is a great guitarist himself asked me whether I had heard a song called 'Marquee Moon' and suggested we try learning the guitar parts together. We sat down like teenagers and tried to learn them. I suddenly realised that you can have loops of really intricate riffs – it doesn't have to be just chords and solos. So, Marquee Moon changed my attitude to arranging - in terms of the guitars - a song. But then, weirdly, after that the track 'Marquee Moon' began to haunt me out. I had some gigs in Australia and Brazil and I figured out that if the record company gave me a round-the-world ticket it would be cheaper for them and also mean I could go to places like Thailand and Chile in between the tour. And every single place I went I would hear the track 'Marquee Moon' being played on local radio stations. It started to become really, really creepy. So, when I came back from the tour I thought I better buy the bloody record as it was haunting me. I found it for a quid in a charity shop as if everything was lining up for me to listen to this record in its entirety. And I did, thankfully, and it has just really changed my attitude to playing guitar and how I could structure things differently in terms of guitar playing."

"My dad used to work on the buses, and the bits of the vinyl from the triple set turned up on the back of the bus. It went into lost property and never got claimed and he got to keep it, which was pretty fortunate for me. You know how there are certain mainstays in your life that you keep coming back to? It works several ways for me now. I was five-years-old when I became aware of that record and the atmosphere struck me really. It's a Phil Spector production and it's kind of cinematic in its sonic aurora. The use of the acoustics of the room – typical Phil Spector tricks – and coupled to those songs… it had a haunting effect on me as a young lad. I've come to realise that some of the sounds on there have become signature sounds for me. I've been informed by that, you know, how a band's supposed to sound together. It's created a bit of a problem between me and recording engineers for most of my life. Thankfully I can do everything myself now. To me, that's how things are supposed to sound. They should sound like the room they're recorded in. The gentle wisdom of the album really has got me through bad times. I dunno if it's because it reminds me of home, but there's a lot of wisdom contained in those lines. I think George Harrison in general is quietly inspirational for a lot of people. He conducted himself with grace, for people in the dynamics of a band with rather large egos – he sets a good precedent. I can't claim to have always followed that to the letter but it's something to aspire to at least."

"I discovered his music through a friend in Paris, Armelle Pioline, who used to be in a very good French group called Holden. They were very singular, and quite similar to Stereolab, actually: very poetic. And anyway she had worked with quite a lot of French people and she introduced me to a scene of French musicians that were kind of successful in their field but that I had never really explored. Bertrand Belin had a sort of hit in his own world called 'Hypernuit' and that song really shattered me. It had such depth: it was kind of a ray of light into a deep darkness. It's a little bit spooky, but incredibly poetic and haunting. It's the kind of tune you can't really put your finger on. It's kind of diffused but it creates a beautiful picture with touches of darkness and light. I'm very attracted to this type of songwriting; there's a singularity in the writing that I love very much. For me the hit on this particular album is 'La Mot Juste'. Pretty much everyone who's been through my kitchen I've played this record to, and they've all flashed on it: what's this? They've taken the name and really showed interest. It resonates; there's a deep resonance with the beauty of it. I'm not particularly a big fan of Bertrand's voice, which a lot of people seem to go for, but certainly the songwriting and the lyrics are quite sharp. He's also an author: he writes books. And the production on the record is very beautiful. It's 'La Mot Juste': the just instruments, the just notes, the just amounts of whatever it took. I like that. There's no excess, no fat. It's what it is. I love it."