"That was the first of his records that I jumped in on. It's a good record to jump in. For starters, he's like a one-man orchestra and he plays three saxes at once, but that kind of overshadows him as a musician in some ways. It's the emotional punch in his playing that's the important thing here. His personality really comes across and he also sounds impish at times, just like a naughty boy. Or like a street fighter. He's got so many aspects to his personality that he really does wear them on his sleeves. He can take things like a Rogers and Hammerstein tune and he can turn it into something else. The thing with jazz is that people think you have to approach it thinking really deeply, but with Rahsaan Roland Kirk the music is so immediate. It should impact you immediately. He's got a pop sensibility but he gets into some really deep stuff as well."

"There's at least 10 Herbie Hancock albums that would be in my top 100 of all time, I listen to a lot, but the thing I like about Crossings is how dark it is. The opening of the second song, 'Quasar'… it's one of the darkest moments in Jazz history, this horn line that sounds more like a dark planet in a sci fi movie. It's so moody, it's mysterious and sexy. Me and my girlfriend like to listen to this record when we sit and maybe get down… we like to listen to really weird shit… I notice that if we're at a party and we put on a song we'll clear the floor. Those dark, mysterious melodies really turn us on. We get off on it, maybe it's because we're damaged. I get most excited about music when it's dark and weird and sad, like I prefer Mozart's Requiem to his symphonies because it's so sad and devastating."

"Now that we're talking about it, I realise that a lot of these albums are trying to merge those two worlds: the classical or jazz aesthetic with the trashy, rock & roll, electric kind of thing. Obviously PJ Harvey would normally fall on that rock & roll/indie rock side of things but this album is different from all her other albums. It's a real step between those two worlds. It feels really ghostly. It's funny because I was obsessed with this album for a long time, and I didn't listen to it again for ages. Then I started listening to it again earlier this year and I've become obsessed with it again with the same intensity as before. It's just so incredibly evocative of colours and textures and sounds. It's just so delicate but heavy as well. She hasn't been explicit on the meanings of the song from this album but I know that the subject matter is extremely dark."

"Not lovely at all is the music of the Edwardses, who are always at least slightly off. Cynics say the pair are really actual jazz superstars Jo Stafford and Paul Weston, but I choose to believe there is really a woman who was born to sing 'You're Blasé; as if she were hanging upside down and swinging back and forth like a drunken pendulum, and a man who plays the piano as though he were also juggling. Hailing from Trenton, NJ, the couple tripped onto the world stage in 1957 – twelve years before the Shaggs – and off again in 1982 after five albums and five singles, some of which are pretty hard to find, so the two volumes of Greatest Hits are a good start. (Misleadingly, the Complete Original Albums compilation contains only the first two albums.) Now that I have publicly come out as a fan, I guess I have to buy all the albums. Excuse me for a moment. Okay, I'm back. "