"Alan Lomax was a folklorist and ethnomusicologist who was making archival recordings and field recordings in the 40s, and this album consists mainly of prison chain gang songs. The first time I heard it, it stopped me in my tracks - it was incredibly moving to hear because it's just the sound of male voices and pickaxes and nothing else... it sounds haunted but hopeful. Like listening to ghosts, the quality of the singing and the recording [is such] that you can never have again - a document of its time. It's spiritual: the pain is in their singing, which would have been their only mode of expression. It's singular and not something I'd put on everyday, being a heavy listen."

"She's a later discovery. She's still alive – an amazing, iconic Italian pop singer from the late 1960s through the 70s and 80s, whom I discovered when I was dating a very handsome Italian man in Rome, driving around on the back of a scooter and listening to her recordings. I always identify her as the Bette Midler of Italy, she had a very similar fashion and look, this crazy curly red hair and amazing make-up. She also had this wild voice, and there's this glamorous European quality to her that she brings me right to when I need to get there, especially living in the United States. Mina, take me away!"