"Léon. Or, as it’s known in the United States, The Professional. But in France it’s called Léon. It’s so weird because for years I’d always called it The Professional and then for some reason it switched in my mind. I mean, that movie was an amazing blend of an international eye within the context of an American… That movie still feels extremely international, certainly with its lead actor but also the way that it was shot and made. But at the heart of that film is this incredible relationship between a cold blooded killer and a young girl. And it’s still so effective and so powerful. I think one of my favorite sequences in the film was when the two of them are kind of like, it’s like this beautiful montage of their relationship as they’re, like, cleaning the apartment and these sort of things that they’re doing together, this really adorable, emotional relationship. And it’s all cut to “Venus as a Boy” by Björk. It’s such a great sequence and there’s such whimsy to their connection. And of course the movie goes into a really dark and awfully sort of tragic place, you know, and it’s really about a man whose sole purpose in life is to be cold and calculated, but it’s all about this girl finding his humanity. It’s just such a beautiful film."

"I don't think I can explain how significant that record was to me. And the more I travel through my life as a musician, the more I find myself coming back to it again and again. My mom had a giant stack of vinyl – mostly classical, with a few rock records. When I was seven or eight years old and started listening to music by myself, that album became the daily soundtrack to my life. I would ask someone to put the record player on for me and I would sit there with big headphones one, listening, and having the record flipped over again and again and again. I would put the music on and just stare at the cover for 45 minutes. The artwork was so important. Sgt Pepper's was full of lyrics I could understand, stories I could follow, music that just made complete sense to me. I understood all of it, and it took me into a world. I think that was the first time I really fell in love with a record. I loved 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' and 'She's Leaving Home', but one of my favourites was the opening track. What I really wanted – what I still want – was to feel like I was at some amazing happening. As a seven-year-old fantasising about being a rockstar, which I was just starting to do, every time I listened to that opening track, I imagined that somewhere there's this group of people in this psychedelic wonderland listening to the Beatles. I didn't have any clue who the Beatles were or what they meant, I didn't have any fucking context. I just knew that if there was a party, this was the one I wanted to be at."

"The thing about Beck was that he felt like a well-kept secret for a while. I can’t actually remember how I stumbled upon him, but it was way back around the time of his second album Stereopathetic Soulmanure, that was before he had his big breakout, crossover albums. This track is from Mellow Gold, which was his third album and had ‘Loser’ on it, so other people were starting to pick up on him, finally. I couldn’t believe that nobody else had heard of this amazing talent; he was completely doing his own thing and you could tell he had real soul. The fact that this was around the time of Britpop just made him stand out all the more to me, I couldn’t stop listening to his early stuff. ’Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)’ sums up what I loved about him in those days and why I still do now. It crystallised the appeal of those records, it’s got such an amazing narrative and it was obvious that it was a true story, that he really had lived above or below that truck driver who was on weird speed or angel dust. He just encapsulates that sort of nightmarishness of having problems with the neighbours and the pitched-down vocals make it sound totally ominous. There’s such an experimental flavour to it musically and lyrically and you can hear how he would cut and paste ideas. That’s how those early albums were - every track different to the last. I love everything he’s done really and that experimental flavour has never really left him, all the way up to making a pop record with Colors. I absolutely battered his first few albums though and for a while I felt like I was the only one. The guy’s a real one-off."

"""My favourite Julian Cope is loose Julian Cope. Back in the day, I was already a fan of his, because of World Shut Your Mouth and Saint Julian; those were great records, not super loose, but very rock and roll. Then, he put out My Nation Underground, which I was pretty dissatisfied with. It had its moments, but it was too produced, and so '80s. I think even he’s disowned that one now. ""After that, I’d be surprised, because I’d be going to the record store and he’d be putting out these albums with no announcement. One of them was Skellington, which this song is from. That record was huge for me, to the point that I named one of my early bands after it. Droolian came after that and it just felt like, when he really hit his peak with Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, it was those previous two albums that really laid the groundwork. ""They were totally loose and off the cuff, he was mumbling the lyrics and the liner notes said that he hadn’t ever really finished them. They’re not commercial records and that made them all the more fascinating to me. They’re more human. It was a lesson - not every record has to be polished. You don’t need to appeal to everyone who’s known you up until then. It’s good to throw up the occasional roadblock. ""Plus, at that moment in time, he was doing the whole “Being a rock star” thing better than anybody else. I hung off of anything he had to say; it felt like nothing he was saying wasn’t extraordinary. I mean, the title of the song says it all. He's just an amazing character."