"That was just good ol’ high-concept fun. Evan and I always like to take ridiculous situations and handle them as though they were real. That’s kind of where the idea of Pineapple Express came from. These ridiculous action movie situations and you handle it just how two idiots would handle it. And that’s kind of what Ghostbusters did. It’s a ridiculous concept but it was handled very much, “How would four dudes do that, you know?” And it’s great. I love that movie."

"Well Mutt Lange produced that one and obviously he produced Back In Black and Highway To Hell and loads of other albums that I really love. But Foreigner 4… well it’s wrong to like it, but it’s just so good! It’s really synthy and really poppy. It’s got ‘Waiting For A Girl Like You’ and ‘Urgent’ and loads of really big songs which all sound just like Mutt Lange. I love Mutt Lange and I love Foreigner, so really it’s my ultimate album. The way Lou Gramm sings is just so earnest, as if his life depends on it, but when you actually listen to what he’s saying, it’s really trite. So singing that like his life depends on it makes things kind of uncomfortable to actually analyse what you’re listening to, but it feels really good in the moment. Out of all the Foreigner albums, this and Double Vision are the ones I always come back to a lot. I once bought an Agent Provocateur t-shirt ironically and then worked my way back from there (laughs). Got the t-shirt, THEN bought the album and bought the one before that, and loved it!"

"If you wanna talk about soul music, I was a big Motown fan and I came a bit later to Otis Redding, but he just had that bit more edge. Obviously it wasn’t rock, but he could do a Motown song, like ‘My Girl’, but with everything roughed-up. I remember reading that when they recorded it, he’d do three or four takes of each track, and they’d all be different, and you could have used any one of them. And you can hear that: it’s like jazz, almost, these wild interpretations. He was in his prime, and that band was in its prime, Steve Cropper was really flying, and there’s nothing much more to say about it, just an extremely powerful album."

"This was very, very hard to put together and I’ve left out so many great songs. I could do a list of 150 songs at least, but ‘La Femme D’argent’ really leapt out. It’s the most electronic of the songs that I’ve selected. To this day, every time I listen to Air, it makes me fall in love with electronic music but in a way that reminds me that you can marry electronic music and, let’s say, traditional instruments, especially the bass guitar. Air are absolute geniuses with basslines, they have a great tone and it’s such a good homage to Serge Gainsbourg and stuff like that. Their sense of melody and structure and building up a song is quite something. They make the best background music that you want to play louder than the conversation that you’re having. I love it for driving, if I don’t know what to listen to, I’ll probably stick on Moon Safari or Premiers Symptômes, which is an EP that’s not talked about that much. So many of their tracks - ‘La Femme D’argent’ being a strong example - are really inspiring from a production point of view. It’s all about the little world that these tracks live in, where it couldn’t be anyone but Air. Bands like Zero 7 have copied Air, but it’s just not as good. You know something has a really unique quality when if you were to try to write a song in that style, people would know straight away; it would be like, ‘Oh, that sounds like Air.’ I think there’s other bands that manage it, take The Strokes when they did Is This It - you can sound like Is This It, there’s a world that that record is in. I could literally go downstairs right now and make a song that’s like Air and people would definitely say it sounds like Air, but if I recorded a song in the style of a band that doesn’t really have a unique quality in terms of recording or production, people would say, ‘Oh, it just sounds like an indie band.’ I never go out and want to copy anything. Rather than listen to it, I basically fast on music when I’m writing and recording, because I’m afraid of subconsciously taking inspiration from somebody else. I mean, you do that any way - you can’t help it - but when I’m asked, ‘What music were you listening to when making this album?’ I tend to reply, ‘No one, really.’ Again, you can’t not listen to music as it’s everywhere, but it’s different in terms of immersing oneself. Like when I got into Scott Walker, I would just listen to his albums, Scott 1, 2, 3 and 4 all the time, but I don’t think you should do that when you’re recording your own music. A while back, I was listening to a song off the most recent Arctic Monkeys record, ‘Four Out of Five’ and it occurred to me that they obviously had been listening to Lou Reed, because there’s that one melody that sounds exactly like ‘Satellite of Love.’ The bit that goes, “Take it easy for a little while…” that’s very obviously “Satellite of Love”. It’s like, come on. They are very open about what they listen to, but that’s just lifted. I think it’s their best record, but in terms of that particular lift they were either aware of it or they were listening to Lou Reed on the tour bus or obsessed with the Bowie/Lou Reed partnership or something. Generally, I do worry about that, because people compare our songs to things. The worst is when people say ‘Shelter Song’ is just ‘Ticket to Ride’, it’s nothing like ‘Ticket To Ride', it’s got a twelve-string guitar on it, that’s like saying any guitar song sounds like Robert Johnson or the Edge or someone!"

"The next one is Temple of Doom. That’s the one that sticks with me most. I was born in ’81, so I know that was [when] the first Indiana Jones was. But I remember Temple of Doom most, and so I just have to pick that. I mean, it’s for pretty much the exact same reasons as Star Wars. It’s my childhood. Indiana Jones is the character that I just wished that I was, you know what I mean? [The one] I wanted to be as a little kid. And they’re also just really, really well made, fantastic movies. You know, all the Indiana Jones — well the first three anyways. I also love that time period. I love that sort of 1930s and 1940s, I love that period — the thought of it. And I like war movies and all that kind of stuff as well."