"The first half is just an astonishing rundown, it's almost like a greatest hits. This record, and Kate Bush in general, has a lot to do with me making music at all. It was her complete inability to do what everybody else was doing, she just was a law unto herself. I found that incredibly awe-inspiring, in most ways. I also loved her use of strings, in a sort of choppy choppy way, rather than a sentimental way. In pop music, you tend to have strings just colouring in the chords at the back or doing a syrupy high note, and I always thought they could do more than that, and she proved it in a kind of [mimics heavy staccato strings] kind of baroque style, which I have shamelessly pilfered basically. The second half she goes off on one, and some of it's a bit silly, but, you know, who cares? Even when it's silly it's great. Now I'm pretty sure I just took one listen to 'Running Up That Hill', which would've been the first single, and thought, ""I'm having that"". I would've bought it on cassette because that was the era, and I probably wore out the cassette until it warbled and I had to buy a new one!"

"Yeah, and The Island of Lost Souls is amazing, from 1932 with Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau. That movie is amazing. That movie’s dark. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, the extras — I mean, even now you watch like, this is really disturbing. The extras are supposed to be the half-man/half-animal people. You can tell they got really bizarre-looking extras before they did the makeup, and everybody looks like they’re deformed and f—ed up. Again, Lugosi plays the leader of the beast men. He’s not in it a lot, but of course he has the line that everybody remembers about the House of Pain: “He who breaks the law goes back to the House of Pain.” He’s in the movie for five minutes and steals the movie. Charles Laughton is incredible. But it’s demented again. The basic premise is a crazy one. They have the beast men and they’re being operated on and just screaming. It’s like, “This is not fun.” You have little kids running out of the theater in tears, or adults. It’s amazing. Still amazing. The cinematography’s amazing. Everything about it is just incredible."

"I chose that because it made its biggest impact on me, because it was the first one I heard [of all of Cat Power's albums]. I remember hearing 'I Found A Reason', which was her Velvet Underground cover, on John Peel late at night when I was driving around and having a cigarette when I shouldn't have been. And I heard John Peel saying ""listen to this amazing release by Cat Power, 'I Found A Reason'"". I just remember hearing it and being like this is a woman I can love forever. I went to see her promote The Covers Record at this tiny gig at Bush Hall. She went on stage in front of maybe 100 people and then totally freaked out, then she was fine and she played some amazing songs and me and my boyfriend sat right at the front. We got to meet her and she just cuddled us: ""You sent such good vibes throughout the whole show, I was looking at you the whole time because was everybody else was so scary"", and I was just like ""I love you!"" So it was just interesting; the other reason I chose The Covers Record is because her interpretations of 'Wild Is The Wind' or 'Satisfaction', 'Sea Of Love', it's like picking out classic songs, like The Langley Schools Music Project, and turning them on their head. For me, in 'Wild Is The Wind', that song could be David Bowie's version, it's sad, it's quite mellow, but she's just distilled it down to one particular aspect, which is really heartbreaking, dark chords, really so minimal. I love doing covers myself. I love changing your whole take on them and exploring a completely different side and changing the arrangements, and the chords even, and changing the lyrics sometimes, it almost becomes a poem that you're putting to something different. I think she's a connoisseur at that and probably because she doesn't play amazing piano and guitar, she does really simple backing, but it becomes almost like this spoken word poem. When she performs, she pushes herself to the edge. The fact that she finds it so hard, you're living with her on the edge when you go to see her and sometimes it's frustrating and you get fed up with her, sometimes you're just willing her the whole way through and in love. I think it's really interesting, the emotions it brings up in the audience, how they deal with that - some people get really fucking angry and some people cry. I think it's like a really interesting psychological public experiment at some of her shows I've been to - I've been to maybe twenty of her shows, and sometimes it's a very uncomfortable, strange process, but it's like Andy Kaufman and stand-up comedians or public artists that just stage these really bizarre events and people's reactions to those. With most people, you go along, and they're there to put on a show and be competent and be amazing, and that's what people think they're paying for these days. We've said about the Langley Schools thing, she never grew out of that childlike weirdness; there's something about all of it that's unapologetic and being you, and if that presses people's buttons because they want you to be something else, they want you to carry them through, then I find that really interesting as well, what it does to the listener. What do you want from an album or a musician? What I want is to be taken to their rawest place. If that's uncomfortable sometimes, then that's cool. You just have to be with people and accept them."

"Pacino in Scarface. That’s another one, just because it was where I was from. I am half Cuban American. That wasn’t the story necessarily of Cuban Americans but I know a lot of the guys that I grew up with and a lot of the people I grew up with felt that way. Being first generation — you know people had a lot to prove. And God, I feel that movie is so sleek, and very much what Miami is. It was really cool. It was a really interesting time when the Mariel boatlift happened and Castro emptying out his prisons and insane asylums. It was a crazy time. I think crime went up by 200 percent in Miami. I mean, literally we had killers on the street and it was a f—ing nutty time. I remember somebody saying that it’s funny that I ended up doing comedy, and I was so into all these other super hardcore dramatic films. But I just remember Al Pacino doing an interview once and him saying that he was — while he was doing that — he kinda really dropped into the role and became this really kind of vicious guy to play Tony Montana. And he said he was coming out of his house one day, and I guess some guy’s doberman had gotten loose and he was kind of “in it” on his way to work — and this doberman came up to him and he realized the doberman was going to attack. And he just kind of planted himself — you know, all Tony Montana — and just f—ing was like “Hey!” And the dog kinda turned around and whimpered and ran away [laughing]. And he was like, “Me, Al Pacino — I would have freaked out but I was just in this thing and I was really in — and this dog comes in… ‘This guy’s f—ing danger, you know? Stay away.'”"

"It’s not an obvious pairing but someone asked me if I wanted to do it and if I’d like to work with her and sent me a couple of her albums. When I heard them I was really blown away with them. I thought, ""this girl’s superb""! She came to my studio and we talked about for a while and she was a lovely girl, very sweet, and her voice is so amazing! So in tune! Beautiful quality and a lovely tone. And a beautiful plumage! [laughs] She was beautiful and I loved her voice and her pitch and her sense of timing was absolutely marvellous, you know? In fact, in her live show, sometimes her drummer is playing his bass drum to her left hand. Her hand’s like a drum machine, almost. Very tight, rhythmically. And I just love her voice. We laid down four or five tracks with her on piano and sometimes she wanted to do it all at once and I’m going, ""hmmm… Don’t do that! Because I’ve got to separate it again and it’s almost impossible to get the separation.’ I wanted to have the complete control that I like; I like total separation and control over the stuff so I can make it sound good. And we did it like that, just one track, and then we did them all separate so she played the piano parts separate and did the vocals separate standing up at a vocal mic and I just really enjoyed it, you know? I still listen back to those songs and I think they’re great."

"It’s a French movie. Came out, like, four or five years ago. It feels to me like the French The Godfather. That would be one way of describing it. It’s about a French-Algerian guy who goes to jail, and watching him work the system of being in jail amongst the — sort of, like, negotiating a specific French jail, and how he’s able to navigate a very tricky world of his Muslim identity, French identity, criminal identity and drug-dealing identity, all these various things. It’s super intense and a super beautifully laid out story. It’s a crazy-engaging movie. Came out in 2010. I would highly recommend that. [Director Jacques Audiard] came out with another movie called Rust and Bone in the last couple years. I just remember seeing [A Prophet] and I was really blown away by it. When I saw it, it genuinely felt like watching The Godfather, watching Al Pacino as a younger man slowly navigate and figure out how to dominate a world that seems to be, you know, overwhelming him."