"It's one of the classic records of all time, but I remember when this came out I wasn't particularly a Stevie Wonder fan. He'd done the singles and he was a Tamla pop artist really, wearing a suit, and I thought I'd got him labelled. But then this record came out and it was like his coming of age almost. It's like a small journey, listening to this album. It has a very positive beginning and ending, from side one right through to the last track. And that whole thing of here I am in New York, that wonderful idea of bringing in sound effects of street sounds that gave a different atmosphere and set the scene for what you're about to hear. I think most bands wanted to do that kind of thing but it was very easy for it to take over, so it was mostly left to the Pink Floyds of this world. But for somebody to do it just on the one track worked really well. And he played drums on this album, too. That was the weird thing, because when you listen to the drums it doesn't sound like a drummer. The things he plays aren't instinctive, so there's a different kind of musicality to what he's doing, and where it goes and where he puts things and where he hits the toms and where he does crashes and stuff like that. In some ways it was very brave of him, because let's face it he could've got any drummer to do it. But it gives it what I suppose these days you'd call an artisan quality, but I think of it as an earthy feel. Otherwise everything would be too perfect on this record. You have to have imperfection to give it character and personality. I think there's something about imperfection that puts you more in touch with what you're listening to, because you're not alienated by something that's unachievable. This record has that by the sack full"

"I don't really know what he's doing anymore musically and I haven't known for a long time, because it hasn't been his main focus for a long time, but Discreet Music is a very singular record. I'm just talking about side A: the other side is just something else. But you can play it on almost any kind of system and it works. It doesn't require hi-fi. I remember in 1978, around Christmas, my first wife and I went on a trip to Cadaqués in Spain, a place associated with Dali, and we rented a converted fisherman's cottage. It was three storeys high and an architect had worked on it, and what they'd done was they'd gutted the whole building top to bottom, and there was a staircase that ran from near the door up to the roof, which was a flat roof that you could sit on. And the floor seemed suspended. It was an amazing place. And we had a tape of this album and the kind of portable cassette player you used to have in the 70s, but you could put it on in the bottom part of the house, not even on full volume, and the room just filled. The music filtered through the whole space. I don't know any other music that could do that. He did other interesting ambient works and his early song records are good, but Discreet Music is such a singular piece. There really is nothing else like it that exists. It's just three notes. It's so simple. There's nothing to it, but it's completely musical."