"I was involved with Homelife, but I was more of a session musician in a way as I wasn't involved in the writing of the music; I don't see it as my band. The core of the band was Paddy Steer and Tony Burnside, who'd both been in Yargo, and a musician called Simon King who was from London and had been in many bands. Computers had just reached that phase where you could do proper recordings on them. It wasn't Pro-Tools but you could do decent hard drive recordings. It was an interesting mix of people of varying age groups and genders, which made it very rich. There was a singer called Seaming To who'd appeared on records by Mr Scruff and she had this incredible octave range, and I played bass clarinet. It was like a digital orchestra and it felt a bit like Sly And The Family Stone and it crossed the jazz line as well. The whole album has the feel of some Mediterranean place that doesn't exist, and place to wallow in; it's very languid. It's Impressionist music that came from a terraced house in Manchester!"

"They're a psychedelic rock band from the early '70s. I didn't know about psychedelic rock when we began, but we were often compared to psych music. To be honest, I was completely ignorant of it. People would use quotes like: ""Mercury Rev is the new Hawkwind."" I had no idea who Hawkwind were! But now, many years later, my girlfriend is introducing me to psych rock from the mid-'60s. Not just stuff like 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' by Iron Butterfly, but also from the esoteric, better defined albums that are wholly obscure. Not only that, but it also has the idea of a concept record and melodrama, flutes and guitars going on. It was strange when I heard Lemmings when we were recording The Light In You and I thought, wow, nothing new under the sun! The moment you think you're onto something original, all you have to do is listen to something from thirty years ago to see someone was onto this all the while back! So it was really stunning to hear this Bachdenkel record from 40 years prior that was attempting or aspiring to something we were in the midst of."

"Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson. I was secretly thrilled that Sofia Coppola, who was panned for Godfather III, made such a triumphant movie so – it was so cool. I think it’s the single coolest movie I’ve ever seen. I haven’t revisited it in a long time, it just meant a lot to me at the time. Partially, I think it’s like I identified very strongly with the idea of being a stranger. I could talk to my therapist for a long time about this, but for me, it was like an Asian-American movie, because the idea of being a stranger in Asia was, to me, more of an Asian-American experience than it was a white American experience. That portrayal felt very inside baseball to me, and I identified very strongly with it. Perhaps it really is psychologically a commentary on me feeling Asian in white America, but I identified with that situation in a very personal way. It always meant more to me than I think the film should have, but I really have a lot of affection for it. I should revisit it, and I wonder if it’ll remain on my list, but I suspect it would."