"Hip-hop has always been such a big thing for me, particularly hip-hop production. So many of my favourite producers growing up, and the reason why I wanted to make produced music, came from people like RZA, Premier, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, Timbaland and early Neptunes, early Kanye even - and Madlib and J Dilla are both right up there. I picked these two albums [J Dilla's Donuts is also on the list] that came out on the same label and from the same scene rather than say, Illmatic, because at that point in my life there was a sense of like, no matter how much I liked Public Enemy or A Tribe Called Quest records, I was coming to them late. But I can remember Madvillainy leaking way in advance and thinking it was so exciting being there for it happening. I think it will be remembered as a classic record. I've got to know Madlib since then, which is amazing because he's an absolute hero. I'm coming to hip-hop more from a production point of view rather than listening to the MCing or the lyrics - that's because I produce music. But this is a record where the Doom part and the Madlib are so perfectly matched. It's like the greatest hits of beat producing - every track is completely insane. The way he cuts up the samples is so, so heavy! I think it's pretty much perfect. It's so eccentric. There aren't that many genres of music where eccentricity is embraced in the same way. This is a really, really weird record, but it's totally canonised as being a classic record. That's wonderful. Maybe in the same way Theo Parrish's music is - people embrace that weirdness, but there are other genres of music where they don't. The feeling I got when I made Swim - and it was a little revelation - was that if you asked your general public person about dance music they'd say it's all the same and formulaic, there's got to be a repetitive beat and blah blah blah. But the fact that there is a kind of repetitive rhythmic element is actually quite liberating - so long as it's got that framework you can do anything else on top of it. You don't necessarily have to have something that functions as a song. And hip-hop's the same thing - so long as there's a beat that moves you, the other things around it don't really matter, you can do what you like. You can have a sample of a Pakistani singer over the top or an old soul record or even just random drum machine hits firing off all over the place - there's a crazy variety of things Madlib does when he's producing. But because it still makes your head nod, you can leave that area and be more free."

"It's his first solo record. To me, in a way, it is a funny record. He is such a talented musician and it is quite a modest record in that it is stripped-down – he plays everything on it – and it is just drums, guitar and bass, and, of course, vocals. But, even though he stripped it down you cannot strip away the fact that he is just supremely talented and has got such an incredible use of melody and hooks. I love the attitude. He had a rule that he could only do five takes and when I was getting to know him and was completely in awe of him, I remember asking him ""but what if you didn't get a good enough take?"" He just laughed and said, ""Well, we just put loads of reverb on it"" and I thought that was such an incredible attitude to have. Also, it is a Welsh language record and although Welsh and English are equally my first languages, I have always struggled writing in Welsh. Gruff has just got this ability to write these lyrics that are so meaningful but whole-sounding and faithful. I am totally in awe of his Welsh lyricism. For me, Welsh is such a difficult language to write in and this is my favourite Welsh language record. Since I was 13 I have been a huge fan of Super Furry Animals and of Gruff. He's just an incredible man and being around that wonderful playful attitude in his music is something I am so glad I was exposed to at that point in my life."

"Jonathan Richman sounded a bit like Lou Reed. The songs were fantastic. The only place you could buy that album was the Rock On store in Camden Town. I think everybody, including John Rotten and all of the Pistols, had been down there at some point to buy it. Anybody that later got into the punk rock scene had bought this record. It still sounds really good. John Cale produced it. It's under-produced if anything, which is what's so good about it. His voice is great. American punk rock was completely different from the London scene – you had Richard Hell & the Voidoids and Television and that, and it all seemed a bit arty. But this was four college kids from California who had got together and made a dark record. It sounds like a guy who's had his heart broken. It's a romantic punk record, really. 'Roadrunner' is the one everybody learnt when they were rehearsing or trying to get into a band. The way he sang, he just sort of threw it away. I can't really think of anybody who'd done it like that before. The solos were great, just one or two notes. Very simple stuff, which was what appealed to the punks. The whole punk thing was about stripping things down because people couldn't play very well. Get the band first and worry about the music later. I saw Jonathan Richman last year doing a festival somewhere, just him and a drummer. He's the only person I know who tells the sound guy to turn it down. But back then he was streets ahead of everyone."

"I didn't really grow up listening to Buju, I kinda got into him a couple years ago, I would say. But soundsystem culture is interesting in that respect, same with soca, same with some of grime, a lot of dancehall, where you’ll go into a party and you’ll know the tune but you don't know who it is. I’ve always had that kind of relationship with Buju. When I really started going through his discography was the same time I got into Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelation and listened to a lot of Nyabinghi - spiritual music that’s not for entertainment. Then later finding that this record was when he was converting to Rastafarianism, but when I listen to this tune it always stuck out to me because how do you sound like the deepest gunman in Kingston, but yet also like the poet. It's perfect man. I'm getting married later in the year and was telling my fiancée ‘You know I’m gonna walk down the aisle to some Buju?’ And even she’s like I can’t really say you’re wrong. We get it as well, if you’ve grown up in London soundsystem culture is so important, there's something you just get. It feels like you’re listening to Kano or Dizzee cos they’re borrowing from it. That album just has a sound, it's really emotive, when you listen to it you feel everything, you know. Whether it's the way he's recorded the guitar or the choice of mic, it all adds to that sound world. It’s more than music - that was really influential to me, I would say."

"Obviously, I'd been listening to hip hop since the mid-80s and kept half an eye on all that stuff as it grew. I was involved in rave culture really early, Spiral Tribe raves and stuff like that and clubbing in Leeds in the early 90s. There was always this really hard UK Garage sound that was great. I loved it. Wiley's come from being a kind of garage MC, one of those guys we listened to on pirate radio in Leeds. He's still got that really underground sound, the way he spits and he never loses that energy either. I was listening to his first album the other day and it still sounds like the future to me. It sounds so contemporary. When you actually analyse grime rhythms, a lot of it is from Nubian rhythms and a lot of the scales are Nubian scales, Algerian scales. When you hear grime, it just sounds like someone's car in the street in London. But then you analyse it and you realise there's all these global influences - it sounds like the whole world. This is what I wanted Melt Yourself Down to be. I wanted to try and create a sound that felt like the whole world."