"What I love about Mulholland Dr. is its full commitment to and immersion in this world of chaotic femininity that almost seems to loop and has no beginning, middle, or end. It’s my favorite film, and I think it’s the best film about actresses and being an actress. How Lynch destabilizes the idea of what a realistic character is—I find that more true to the chaotic emotional reality that the film is trying to convey than something more linear. This film just plucks away at something deep and dark in the back of my monkey brain, and I can’t get enough of it. The way he uses mood and sound, and the way he has nightmarish visions and images, like the lady behind the dumpster—he just lets that hover over the film and you feel like you’re going to see her again but you never do. I know there have been criticisms of the way he portrays women, particularly white women, and white people. People critique the lack of diversity in his films, and I understand why, but I almost feel as though ideas like whiteness and femininity are characters in his films that he explodes in the way I believe they should be."

"I guess I’d start with Blade Runner, which is a film I’ve watched many, many times, and bought many times on different formats, and seen in the cinema many times, and bought books about it and read about the making of it, and watched, you know, all the documentaries that I could get my hands on. I think why I like it is that it’s a film that so transports you to somewhere else. It’s not even just about the story, which is reasonably straightforward, it’s the texture of it — every frame of it, every grain of film, or every pixel on Blu-ray or what not, holds information. It’s so densely packed. You can watch it again and again and see different things in it all the time. That’s the genius of it. I think that period of Ridley Scott, with Alien and all his adverts around that point… I mean, it’s just never dated. If you watch something like Black Hole, which is kind of around the same period, and you look at it, Disney’s Black Hole looks like a films from the ’40s in comparison to Blade Runner. Blade Runner could be made today and it wouldn’t look any different." """

"It’s such a sick song. Just listening to the lyrics, how he can juxtapose sounding happy, but also when you listen it’s quite melancholy what they’re saying you know – “Life, life, tell it like it is, you don’t have to die before you live”. I think I always go back to Sly in particular, across his discography from a production point of view - how his drums sound so crisp, and at the end when you get into the break. I just listen to it and I’m like man, how did you record this? I think the 70s in general… what were they on man? How does the music sound so crisp and completely knock when you put it on a speaker or a soundsystem, how is it still so strong? And then I play Drake and it’s like… it doesn't sound the same. It’s not that I’m living too much in nostalgia or trying to be something I’m not, there’s just something strong."

"I saw The Beastie Boys when I was about 14, perhaps around the corner at Hammersmith Odeon. I was fucking obsessed. There were loads of twats like me wearing ill-fitting Adidas, looking like Harry Enfield characters. We were so into it, but very young. I started off with Run DMC, though, I liked the stuff where it was just a drum machine and them singing. We were really into Def Jam, and we pre-empted a big wave of other people being into it. I think we saw Run DMC as well, that was a bit tougher. I guess with Beastie Boys, cynically they were just Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin saying ‘let’s make a band for all the white kids’, and we were just gone, we were away."

"I picked this, but it's virtually impossible to pick one [Drake record] and not another. There is no inconsistency in Nick Drake as far as I'm concerned, he's just extraordinary. I picked this one because I had to pick an album, I had to put him in there and I could't choose all the albums. I think I did this very honestly - that was the first record I heard by him, and I thought I'll be honest and I'll be loyal to that! 'Time Has Told Me', 'River Man' - it just has so many fucking great songs on it! 'Cello Song', 'Fruit Tree'; it's kind of the classic songs. I don't know what to say about Nick Drake - it's like trying to talk about air or your arm, or just something that's so much a part of your life and has been for so long now. If you want an introduction to Nick Drake, just start there; it's a great place to start. I've never tried to deliberately replicate him, but there's a song on my new album that's a complete rip-off of a guitar intro to one of his songs! It wasn't until Tom [Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers] walked in and went ""ah yeah, Nick Drake, great"" and I was like ""really?!"" And it was right under my nose - I think he's just become such a part of my... everything, I'd never even noticed that I'd gone ahead and done that."

"Leslie West - formerly Leslie Weinstein - was a New York guitar player who played with The Vagrants and lots of other local bands that were coming up in the New York scene. The thing about that record is the producer was Felix Pappalardi, who produced Cream as well as The Youngbloods, and was also an accomplished bass player. So, originally it was just going to be a Leslie West solo record, there was no Mountain, the name of the record was Mountain, but it was by Leslie West. But he didn't have a bass player so Felix Pappalardi played the bass, but the material started coming together so fast. I mean, songs like 'Long Red', I listened to those growing up and, in fact, a few of my songs had their beginning on Mountain songs. Bow buh duh doo dah duuh dow, that began a song called 'Watchin' You' that I wrote, with a flat third; you can hear where it crosses over, that's from 'Never In My Life', a Mountain song. His guitar playing is just undeniable. And of course 'Mississippi Queen' is great, just three chords! When I picked up the guitar and started to play licks and stuff like that, I sound like Leslie West, because intrinsically he's not about speed, he's about melody. Blues-based melody, I'll grant you, but it still holds up to me. I still play it."