"This is such an important record. It spawned a whole scene of music. You talk to any electronic musicians from the 90s onwards, and they'll say that. And they were just two boys from Leeds. I haven't seen him for a long while, but we worked with Gez, G-Man, we released his records in the 90s and I know what kind of guy he is. But I'd also spoken to Mark Bell, and Mark was very different. When I talk to Gez, I just talk to someone who's made a record, and he's just talking about his music. Mark was very clever and he was obviously the thinker of the two of them. But that combination of the two of them, those two guys: the title track with that bass, and 'Simon From Sydney', again it's a record that we've listened to a billion times. Gez used to say that they were part of a breakdancing crew, they were just mates, and they were so young when that record came out. I think they were 19, and they had a song in the top 20 and somebody on Radio 1 said their music was awful or something like that. They had everything happening at once at a very young age. I'm sure it affected them. But LFO were lads, you know. It wasn't high concept. It was dancefloor. That was what they were trying to do: to move people's butts and shake the bottom end."

"I love her words, I love her guitar playing and the tunings, and it’s just constant inspiration for me, especially in that very, very personal ‘writing about your own life as subject matter’ stuff. She’s the queen of it in a way. I’ve been talking a lot about that first record that some people call Song To A Seagull and the songs are beautiful on it, but it’s also got this great over-riding concept, there’s a side about the country and a side about the city. You could say Joni is this folk singer but at the beginning she had this whole conceptual side and her early records are very conceptual. Ladies of the Canyon I’ve just started listening to again recently. I feel like besides Blue it’s just one of those ones that’s so classic and overheard you just stop listening to it because you’ve heard it so many times. I listened to it again and realised it’s also this concept album about this place she lived at the time and it’s got all these great, heavy songs on it including ‘Circle Game’ and ‘Woodstock’ and its an amazing record. It defines this Topanga Canyon era as much as Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush does – it was one of those places in time like Athens, Georgia when REM was starting or Seattle when Mudhoney and Nirvana were coming up, it was a really special place with a really tight knit musical community and a lot of people sharing ideas and songs and lovers, whatever it was, and I think that record really defines it in such an amazing way. I’m kind of obsessed with this song on that record called ‘Conversation’ which is about a secret love affair. The way she tells her stories are so amazing, and on that record the guitar playing is exquisite and the way she uses these women’s’ choruses behind her sounds almost like it could be off a Meredith Monk record or something like that, so I’m always bouncing around her early records. Everybody always picks Blue as the classic and I fucking love that record so much, but I really love all of those early records, up through Court & Spark she could do no wrong. You could almost pick any one of them, and I felt like I’d been neglecting Ladies of the Canyon recently so it’s been on a lot in the last week or so. Every time I hear it I feel like it tells me new things about my life as well."

"I first heard The Human League at a party, 'Being Boiled'. It was miles apart from punk music, punk is rehashed rock & roll really, but Travelogue wasn't repeating anything, it was just out there on its own. The first two Human League albums were so different from anything I'd ever heard in my life. That's when I really realised how interesting and powerful synthesisers could be. I really liked Phil Oakey's voice and I think on tracks like 'Dreams Of Leaving' it's really an emotional song, and the way that they used the keyboards to bring that emotion out is amazing. I really like the lyrics on that song, and the out-of-this-world sounds. I got the opportunity to work with Martin Ware years ago, and most of the time that we were recording was me asking questions, "How did you get that sound?""

"Obviously, Pet Sounds is a massive record and a defining influence on me when I was about 12 or 13 when I first heard it; a huge impact. But weirdly, my younger brother told me that he never really got on with Pet Sounds because he found it to be really hard work in the beginning and it took him many years to fall in love with it. I was really familiar with that throughout my teens, but then later on I discovered The Beach Boys' 'Brother Years', as that period's known, and I just really loved a lot of that stuff. In hindsight, you knew that this was a band that were, I guess, nearing the end of the road and things were changing and they were veering off. Dennis Wilson had his shit and things ended very tragically for him and Brian, with that well publicised walking disaster and they were really tough times. But Holland doesn't sound like a record where they're all struggling or coming to an end or that it's a swansong; it doesn't really feel like that and it still has that really fresh Beach Boys approach. I get this warmth from it and it feels like a big hug. It's this big, lovely Californian cuddle. What I gravitate to here are the musical changes which are almost like scene changes. You've got stuff like 'The Trader' where the second half just goes to another place and that's always inspiring. Of course they're not the only band that does that but it's something that's very inspiring to me, especially on this record. And it's like that on Matador where I'm not constrained by the typical pop structure of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight-double chorus and The Beach Boys are always brilliant for that where they take you off in a completely different direction. And it never feels as if it's self-indulgent, weirdly, when it should be because all of these tracks are so good and so technically proficient. You almost wouldn't forgive them for those self-indulgent touches were it not for the fact that these are guys on top of their game and you can really hear it. It's a great album. I've got my record collection in the studio and my main record player is out in the studio's kitchen and that's where I've got my box of select records. It always changes from week to week and Holland's been there for about four months now. There's always a good time for it."