"The first song I heard of theirs was called 'Funky' and the B-side of this was a song called 'Mentally Mad'. I was just listening to a mix show of theirs one night and they played all this new shit. I was like: 'Who the fuck is this?' I needed to know everything about this group from there; I knew this shit was ill. I discovered that they were from the Bronx and the more I listened, the more I realised that their beats were hard as fuck. I started reaching around and I found the 12"" single before the album came out and a few other songs. When the album eventually came out I was just mesmerised, especially with Kool Keith and his high-pitched rhymes talking about all this space-age, futuristic shit. It influenced me massively in that it was just this mad, unorthodox music and when I started making music, mine was very unorthodox as well. They were talking spaceship shit, like it was from another planet and they were 'Hardcore Bronx' fools too. The beats were banging with a big old bass and it just felt like some next level shit. It was hard as fuck, street shit set against these incredible lyrics – you just did not hear people talking like that. Kool Keith would rhyme but he'd also do this shit where nothing at all rhymed (like 'Mentally Mad') and that was very different at the time. They came just before Doctor Octagon and I never got into them or none of that as it felt watered down. Ultramagnetic MC's were just pure hood shit and they stood out because of it. Critical Beatdown was just incredible with the music and the beats they used. There's something too about having the contrast of the deep voice and the high pitched voice that's kind of like B-Real or Chuck D and Flava Flav. When one goes away, the other comes in and they switch again: when they come back, it's always more powerful too. They created a really dynamic sound."

"Heat, the Michael Mann film, almost purely for its action sequences. I watched it again recently, and actually, it really doesn’t work putting De Niro and Pacino on the same screen, doing a scene together, because they just try to outact each other. I didn’t like that scene, watching it again. I thought it was almost quite hammy. Their performances individually are incredible; it’s just that they… It’s almost too much acting to take."

"I have that movie where my dad, at a young age, sits you down and is like, “Son, you’re gonna watch this movie.” And you’re like, “Oh, no.” For me, that was Braveheart. That’s definitely an all time favorite. I love Braveheart, I love Mel [Gibson]. I think he’s just an incredible — he’s obviously an amazing actor — but I think he’s also an incredible filmmaker. Braveheart is way up there for me."

"It’s hard to boil them down. I would say, well, Harold and Maude, obviously, because it seems like something… you know, when I saw Harold and Maude, I didn’t laugh; I was a boy and I just felt like a Starbelly Sneetch finding the other Starbelly Sneetches, you know. So that movie was a biggie, and still is. I’m thinking of movies that I go back and watch, ever time I see them."

"And then, I love I Heart Huckabees. I think that might be my favorite comedy. And I know it’s weird, because every time I tell people that, they’re like, “Oh, I’ll have to see it.” And I say, “You know, you might not like it,” because it’s just so weird. But I loved it. I was obsessed with it when I first saw it; I watched it four times in one week."

"It's not just an album to me; it's like a movie. It's a whole story—there's cruel, tragic storytelling. I listened to it for the first time in Berlin. Sometimes when I travel, I like to find things that relate to where I am. So I listened to this, and for the whole afternoon, I was like, Oh man. How am I going to leave the apartment? Something changed after I listened to this album. I love Lou Reed, because his voice sounds like your inner conscience. When I read a book, it's Lou Reed's voice narrating it. It's very intimate. I can't really listen to this album casually. It's like going to a museum and seeing a painting that really means something to you—a sacred moment. I don't have many albums that do that for me."

"A lot of people didn’t like it, but I loved Steven Soderbergh’s remake of the Russian film Solaris from the minute I saw it. I like it more than the original. I never paid too much attention to soundtrack music before that, but as soon as I heard that one in the theater I was just like, “What the fuck is this?” If you looked at my iTunes playlist, this soundtrack might be the most played album on my computer. It’s like experimental ambient music that still really involves your emotions. You could draw a line from this soundtrack to “The Ghost of You Lingers” from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which came out around this time."