"This record is incredibly passionate, and it's got incredible lyrics. I've since become friends with Wes [Eisold, frontman] and he's a great guy, a great writer and musician, but this record just holds so much weight in my youth, at a time when I was quite lost and hardcore really picked me up. They were emerging at that time and they're from Boston, which just seemed violent to me, and I needed that violence in my life. I stage dove to American Nightmare in Camden Underworld in 2003 and dislocated my arm, and when I saw them play it was something hard to ignore. They looked like mods, like they should have lived in Brighton in the 70s. It was so weird to see a dude in skinny jeans, DMs, and a Fred Perry shirt but screaming his guts out in North London, surrounded by kids in black hoodies, it was bizarre. I still have it in my workout playlist now and that's a good 15 years on. When I hear the song 'AM/PM' it makes me want to stage dive again, and I love that it can make me feel like that so late in the day."

"I’ve got two more to go, and the ones that popped into my head are the Lethal Weapon movies! I love the Lethal Weapon movies. I know I shouldn’t claim them all together but the combination of humor and action and the relationship between Glover and Gibson is just… That’s the kind of stuff that I watched and was like, “I want to do that!” It never occurred to me that that meant acting. Those are the kind of movies that I could watch over and over and over and know every line and it not be a problem that I know every line; I still enjoy the effect it has on me, you know what I mean?"

"All bands develop over time, and I'm definitely an old school Metallica fan. Those first three albums are about as good as it gets really. I really enjoyed the track 'One' on this record. It was a really complex piece of work. And that story of the guy who's come back from war and has lost his arms and legs and everything was just really dark and sombre. It was just a very strong political statement and that caught my imagination. I love those first three Metallica records, but I chose ...And Justice For All because of the overall complete experience of the album. This album shows the very first signs of Metallica being adventurous with their sound, and it has a great confidence to it. I've always admired them because they've always just been themselves, by themselves. They just do exactly what they want to do and I'm very excited to know exactly what this next one is going to sound like, even though Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] has dropped some hints that it won't sound like this record. But, y'know, everybody wants them to do Ride The Lightning again in the same way that everybody wants Priest to do Painkiller again. I don't think that some people understand that it's difficult to get things right for you as a band at the same time as trying to please your fans. I know from experience that you need to let your heart lead you, which is why I'm so interested to hear this new material."

"It's probably my third favourite rap album of all time. Again, I think it's a really overlooked record: I think it's so good because he was produced by The Bomb Squad. I remember being shocked by that at the time; for some reason I didn't think that Ice Cube and Public Enemy got on, so I was quite surprised that The Bomb Squad had produced it. But you could just tell that their production values were there straight away, and it would open up into some kind of expression, and then it would close back down, and you could hear all these things going on in the background. This was when Ice Cube was still kind of known as just being a rapper, and for me this was his peak. There are songs on there like 'The Nigga Ya Love To Hate' which is just amazing; the title track; and I think one of my favourite songs on there is 'Once Upon A Time In The Projects' which is just fucking brilliant. That was always the thing about Public Enemy: they always ruled because they had the best rapper in the world; Chuck D was the best rapper and everything bounced off that, and that's why this album is great - Ice Cube, here, is most connected and it feels so important that he gets his point across. He's not disconnected, he's not being arrogant, it's just pure aggression. I never see this listed as one of the best rap albums of all time, but for me it's just a brilliant record. It's up there with some of the Kool Keith stuff, it's up there with Public Enemy, it's up there with NWA. It's just brilliant. And it's really sad that he didn't go onto do more work with the Bomb Squad, because it was obviously a marriage made in the projects and it was fucking amazing. It's another lost classic that just doesn't get mentioned anymore."

"It’s brilliant. It’s almost like a detective story: you try to work out why this person hasn’t spoken. The logic of it is so strange, you know — you sort of go, “Where does it start?” It’s something in a sense that could have existed without those bookends, without that kind of prologue to it, but it adds a strangeness to it, in its awareness of its form. They’re not the main things I enjoy about it — I like it, but I mainly like those two actresses, and how lean it is: straight in, the first scene is, “Miss Vogler, stop speaking… ” Everything’s so condensed. It’s clearly someone who’s made so many great films already — just a remarkable series of films. And it’s odd, because it’s very rare that I like someone with no humor to them, and he has no humor. I mean, Smiles of a Summer Night is not a hoot, you know? It’s odd that something can be so great without humor; it’s strange. Most great directors have a bit of humor in their films. Kubrick’s hilarious; Malick’s really funny…"

"I’m gonna say Chinatown. That’s just great storytelling, acting, directing. I think Polanski’s an amazing director. It’s opera, you know. It’s the biggest issues. You can’t tell an epic without a big problem, and Chinatown is brilliant in the sense of Los Angeles history — the whole creation of the Valley, and the diversion of water to make the Valley. [Screenwriter] Robert Towne was able to take a very interesting historical fact — what’d he call it, Mulwray instead of Mulholland? — and tell this amazing personal story about it. I like that very much. I guess The Godfather is similar to that in many ways; obviously based on certain facts. I like that historical aspect to Chinatown as well."

"I was 16 or 17. I'd just started doing Art A Level at school, and this whole world suddenly just opened up. For ages, I'd been playing the flute, playing the saxophone and skateboarding. That was it really and then all of a sudden, I hit that age. My friend Adrian had a ridiculous record collection. He started making tapes for us, me and another friend of mine, and he introduced us to all that stuff: The Doors, The Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. I was getting really into art and really into poetry. I discovered Picasso, Matisse, Magritte at the same time. I also discovered surrealism and surrealist poetry, literally in the same couple of years. It was like an explosion in my head. 
'Run Run Run' was just brilliant because it was so chaotic. I'd been into music for a while - I was really into The Police and various bits - but this was just so different. I just loved how nihilistic it was. Really dirty. Luckily my partner's a massive Velvet Underground fan as well, so we stick it on quite often, even now. I still get the same feeling from it when I listen to it now that I did that very first time. I still get that electric charge of energy from it."