"Both Maxwell Kardon and I were really into 'Short People', it's just a weird hit that's skewering racism and I think also one of those funny hits that are misunderstood. It might be banned by certain radio stations for being offensive because people just didn't get it. It's sort of like Ronald Reagan used 'Born In The USA' as his anthem [but] Bruce Springsteen's like, "I hate you!" Just the idea of that song being banned is so funny to me. We were inspired by the production and arrangements of the songs. There's the song 'Baltimore' that Nina Simone also does a cover of, but I think I prefer the Randy Newman original. It was a big sonic touchstone for us, as far as the drum sound on the songs that we rip off, on 'Fathers And Brothers' at the end, that sort of piano part that we pretty much stole from 'Baltimore' and the Little Criminals album. I like the fact this guy was an off-kilter songwriter and was definitely not afraid to make a song that had a historical context and call it a pop song."

"There aren't many tunes here - it's just a way of making music, really. It's one of those things where you read the sleeve notes and listen to it and just become completely engrossed. It's a bit pretentious being a drummer and liking Drumming by Steve Reich. But it's basically really, really simple and primitive, and I like it. I like how it has a simple motion which just gradually becomes something incredibly sophisticated without you noticing, but it's all in your head. You're making it like that. It's a great driving record. Going down the motorway listening to Drumming is absolutely brilliant. Does it remind me of working with Martin Hannett? Well, he wasn't tyrannical, but he was in charge. And he would never let you forget that."

"Punch-Drunk Love is at the very top of the list. Like everybody else, I’m a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson. The journey that he took Adam Sandler on in that movie, starting as a guy who is very put-upon and all this kind of stuff, and then love came into his life through Emily Watson. Just to see that journey. There’s a great scene at the end when he just totally stands up to Philip Seymour Hoffman at his mattress store, and there’s that time when Emily’s in the car with him, and he grabs… I think it was a tire iron in the car and swings. It’s just such a great moment. And then that crying scene with the therapist in the closet. I mean, it was just perfection, that entire film, for me."

"Dr. Strangelove. I think purely because of Peter Sellers. I love his characters; he’s just having so much fun. And that kind of subversion of very serious things going on is right up my alley; I really like that. I love Kubrick’s films, but that for me is also a very different Kubrick film. People either get it or they don’t. I love that film."

"The Shining. It was the first movie that I saw when I was a kid that, like, really traumatized me. It was mostly the two little girls as well as being in room 237. That was one of the movies that I remember really, after watching that movie, having a problem sleeping. But as I’ve sort of grown up with that movie, what’s been so inspirational about that movie… if you watch that movie, like everybody watches that movie, it’s terrifying, it’s one of the scariest movies of all time. And what I think’s great about it is that it’s not only a horror movie, it’s more a movie about an alcoholic man who hates his family, and then it’s a horror movie. To me, all the best horror movies are a regular movie first and then they’re a horror movie. That’s true with the The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby as well as The Shining. But what’s most exciting to me about The Shining, and there’s a famous quote from the Vivian Kubrick documentary, from Jack Nicholson, where he says he’s been spending his whole career trying to make his performances real, like no one’s ever seen realness onscreen and he’s going to be the one to make it real and he’s going to do something no one’s ever seen before, this quest to make it authentic. And then he’s like, “Then you get someone like Stanley who says, ‘Yeah, Jack, it’s real, but it’s just not interesting.'” After I heard that conversation, if you watch The Shining and don’t get sucked into it just being a great scary movie, if you walk into it and just watch the choices that are being made, it’s an insane movie. Like, everybody’s performance is, like, the stakes are so high, as if every line they say is the end of the world. Every shot is so grandiose. The locations are so unbelievable, and they’re all built, which is also totally insane. It’s like this constructed movie that’s so hypnotic because every time Shelly Duval comes on the screen and screams, “[falsetto] They’re trying to kill Danny!” and it’s like, in any other movie that would just be like a joke. Or Jack Nicholson, if you look at every take of his in the movie, [it] shouldn’t work. It’s all so extreme with his performance. But it’s consistent and, I guess as Stanley Kubrick said, it’s interesting. Because it’s consistent, the movie has this very hypnotic tone to it and it’s something that Kubrick is obviously very known for. It not only is an amazingly terrifying movie and one of the best horror movies of all time, it also is just this really unique approach to filmmaking that I’ve always found really fascinating. It seems to, across the board, raise the stakes and make everybody just operate on this much higher level, and that’s always been very hypnotic to me."

"I only heard this for the first time about six years ago. It was just like this culmination of melody… like the way he… Why do I love it? I don't know. What I love about his music is the playfulness, the way he plays with words, his sense of humour. There's no clear obvious harmony, no clear obvious arrangements. It's very individual: it doesn't sound like a particular style. It has, actually, a little bit of a jazz style, because he was coming out of jazz: that was his love. It's like he's this poet who's finding the music that will fit for each song. It's kind of how I approach my music, too. You're not looking at it like, "This song is going to be this kind of song"; it's more like: "This song is about this and so maybe I'll make these sounds with it." It's a much more playful approach to music. I like that. I identify with that a lot."

"The last one, well, I think for me — at the moment — it’s Come and See, the Elem Klimov film about the Russians fighting the Nazis. I’ve only ever seen it once, and I don’t know if I ever want to see it again, but it is an incredibly, profoundly affecting and terrifying experience. I just thought it was amazing. I saw it maybe two years ago, and it’s just stayed with me so much. It was a film I had and I was scared of watching. I don’t know why I bought it. I buy a lot of films all the time, and I’ve just got cupboards and cupboards of movies. I saw it on the shelf and looked at it at like midnight one night and thought, “I’ll just watch five minutes of it and see what it’s like,” and then at two in the morning I was still watching, going “Oh my god, I’ve never seen anything like this.” What I like about it is that it’s a mixture that shouldn’t work on so many levels, because it’s very arty and it’s very self-conscious, but yet it’s utterly realistic, and it feels emotionally realistic. It feels like you’re totally transported into that situation. I’d also double that with The Ascent, the Larisa Shepitko movie. She was married to Klimov and made a movie 10 years earlier on almost the same subject, and her film is just unbelievable as well, you know. It’s well worth checking out, that Criterion box set. Mind-blowing stuff. Have you seen Come and See?"

"PlayTime is an incredible film. I just love the idea of staging scenes that look familiar but don’t function as the scenes we imagined them to be. And I like that he was fascinated with the mundane. So there’s an airport setting and there are people wearing uniforms and people that look like passengers waiting, and there are scenes occurring, but it’s just the form of a scene that you have seen in some way many times. The way he mixed sounds, where the background noise was louder than the dialogue—having that buried in the background when people spoke is just really brilliant filmmaking. I love the recontextualization. And it’s a masterpiece, with long, huge, choreographed shots of all these entrances and exits and things happening in the background and foreground. So where you’re placing your attention has been subverted so you don’t quite know what you’re looking at or what to look at. And that is incredibly impressive and very inspirational."