"I was already into the game and I already knew Cube when this came out. I already knew Public Enemy too because I worked with them with my first band, The 7A3 and they produced one song on our album. At this time, I was hip to the game and when Ice Cube released this record I was just like 'This is fucking dope.' I knew a little of what to expect [from hearing mixtapes] but he was taking the best from two different coasts and just putting them both together; you knew this shit was going to be special – there's no way it could not be. With his time in NWA coming out of the West Coast, it was the first time you heard a great rapper coming out of that area: not a good one, but a great one with power. Now you had a West Coast MC with a New York based production unit, a New York sound which was something revolutionary in the game and I felt that the power that he brought was incredible. Ice Cube brought what was going on in certain parts of LA to the world. He left NWA, he did his first solo album with Public Enemy's producers. The storytelling, the self-centric lyricism of Ice Cube was phenomenal: that shit just took over. It was in many ways like a gangster Public Enemy and it changed the way people viewed and listened to this music, including me. Previously, you thought there were limits to how far you could go when you listened to this type of music but he just shattered every fucking limit that you thought there was: Ice Cube shattered your perception of music."

"I’d just say Greatest Hits, if we’re making a list of albums to turn people on, a greatest hits will do fine. Some of that music I listened to when I was nine to thirteen did not stand the test of time, but Sly and the Family Stone is kind of ridiculous in how good it is. Songs, musicianship, just fucking weirdness, sound and ‘how the fuck’; again - as I was saying about 1999 – you’re just scratching your head, like, ""how did this happen?"" If you play in a band and you’re young and you haven’t listened to Sly and the Family Stone, then your band is gonna fucking suck [laughs]. Probably not a true statement, but to me it is. I grew up in the seventies so I’d hear these stories, like he didn’t turn up to his gig, he was four hours late to the gig... I mean they were huge but it was just willy nilly live. I would say the influences on my bass playing was a really wide thing, I didn’t really decide I was going to be a bass player until I was 19, 20. I was playing drums, I was playing guitar, I was playing bass and when I finally took that big step and said, ""okay, I’m going to be a bass player"" and I kind of melded a load of things together. The band Magazine, that bass sound with the chorus on the bass... it took me some years to work out that effect, 'cos I didn’t know much about effects in the eighties, but the sound you hear with Guns is really derived from listening to that first Magazine record, combined with first Sly and the Family Stone and Prince, with a real punk rock ethic underlining the whole thing."

"We can throw in Fantastic Planet, La planète sauvage. We can throw that in there. The cut-out animation style, the psychedelia of it. I think it’s such a hypnotic piece of work, and I loved it ever since I heard the samples of the movie. I heard the samples before I saw anything. Madlib sampled that s—. I was like, “What is this animated movie?” So I credit him for me hearing about this, and I have just been on it ever since. I own some of the original cut-outs of the movie that they did. I buy some weird little pieces of art sometimes, but that is one of my prized possessions right there. You know, bits of little movie history."

"I watched Alien again, Ridley Scott’s movie, and I felt completely taken by it and distracted for a while. When I watched (it), I really wasn’t thinking about coronavirus – or our terrible president, or anything – I was focusing completely on what was going on in the movie and exclusively on the drama within (it). So I’d say (quarantine watching) can totally be entertainment, (but) just make sure that it actually takes your brain energy, you know? Like horror movies, or (films) that really (give) you anxiety, and happiness, and joy – everything because of the movie. It shouldn’t be that your mind can wander off, it can’t be too easy. Also, I’ve discovered that I can cook as well – that’s big to me."

"Well the next one is less action oriented. This is where I began to struggle. Because I had my first four and was like, “Okay, that’s perfect,” and then I had to pick another one. This decision is a bit tough; there’s a three way tie for this, I should say. I’m going to pick The Conversation with Gene Hackman and John Cazale. And the reason I’m thinking this is, I did a movie with Anthony Hopkins called The Rite, and the director of photography — we talked a bit. And he really wanted to have that ’70s feel and stuff — it’s when they just started to use the zoom lens for the first time, and how innovative it was. And then in the 1980s, it became overused and used for the wrong reasons and all that kind of stuff. The Conversation is one that, if you watch The Conversation for the opening sequence where you hear a conversation taking place as the master — this zoom from way up is zooming in over a park. And I was just absolutely blown away by it because you can hear exactly what’s happening, but you don’t see. You’ve got no idea who’s talking. You don’t know where they are or what’s happening. I was blown away. And Gene Hackman is one of my favorite actors. I just think he’s incredible; I could watch him read the phone book. I could watch him pretty much not do anything [laughing]. You just wonder what’s going on in his mind. He’s one of those actors who is saying one thing, but you know there’s so many different things going on inside of his head. You just never know exactly what it is and stuff. I love that. I love being kept guessing. Francis Ford Coppola is one of the greatest directors of all time, and what I thought was great was that it sort of embodies that period of time. Even though it was made in the ’70s and it’s a very specific ’70s movie, I think it’s very, very particular to today. You know, with surveillance and all that kind of stuff. And I just think the whole idea of it is incredible, and it’s just so well made."

"How about a comedy? The Devil Wears Prada. I love that film. I love Meryl Streep, along with the rest of the world. She’s the bad guy in this film, so to watch Meryl play a bad guy with all of the layering and the subtlety, still you love her in the end. It’s just wonderful. I love the couple of speeches in there ? Stanley Tucci has a couple of speeches in there, one of which is to Anne Hathaway. Anne comes in to him and tells him, couldn’t she be given credit for trying? And he goes off on her about the value of trying and whether, in fact, she does deserve credit for trying. Great, great speech. Then the other speech I love is the one about the blue sweater, where Anne Hathaway thinks she’s underplaying her fashion sense by wearing sort of nondescript, underplayed, like she?s not going to be one of these fashionistas, and Meryl Streep goes off on her about how many hours were put in by designers crafting the kind of underplayed, nondescript look that often people are… they try to represent themselves by looking like they don’t care about how they look, and they just kind of throw something together. She goes off about this blue sweater that Anne Hathaway’s wearing, and I just thought that was brilliant, and in the mouth of Meryl Streep, it was even more on the mark."