"Pasteur Lappé is a guy from Cameroon who was making music in the late ’70s, and “Sanaga Calypso” was on this collection of experimental African funk music. The first time I heard this song, it reminded me so much of the Clash’s Sandinista! The Clash were obviously influenced by dub and reggae, and they paid homage to those styles very openly and respectfully, but to hear something that reminded me of a song like “Charlie Don’t Surf”—dancey, soulful, very beautiful, and kind of elegiac—it just made me smile. I literally said, “Joe Strummer for sure heard this song!” I like building a small lineage between my own listening experience and the listening experience of somebody I’ve been inspired by, and that’s what this song does for me. It puts me back in the sphere of influence. And it’s catchy."

"At this point I was playing in a hardcore band, I was listening to hardcore, I was going to hardcore shows, and at a certain point it started get a bit old for me. This album showed me a way of being intense and meaningful and indeed heavy without distorted guitars and taking your shirt off and screaming at the front row. It planted a seed which, when Million Dead broke up, flourished into what I do now There was also a simplicity to it, because I had got into the complicated end of hardcore and bands like Dillinger Escape Plan and Botch, and there was something about simple chords on an acoustic guitar that reminded me of listening to Counting Crows. It was powerful to me. It planted a seed which, when Million Dead broke up, flourished into what I do now."