"This is the most contemporary record of the lot. They're a West Coast band. There's one track on there called 'Valiant Brave', which is one the most extraordinary songs I've heard in many years. It sounds like an Apache war cry recorded on the backside of a mountain somewhere. It's the most indescribable record. I'd love to have written it. There's just two chords and the arrangement is quite unusual. It hit me first time round and I was listening to it over and over. Then I bought the album. The rest of the album is very tight harmony work. They sound like sons of the Beach Boys. It's encouraging to hear a young band sound that good. It's purist. It's where the Fleet Foxes are going. It's a lovely record. Primarily I find new music by people telling me about bands, but I like the Uncut and Mojo magazine sampler CDs – they've got a wealth of tracks by new bands, underground bands. That's where I heard 'Valient Brave'. When you're making a living out of music and writing, there's such a lot to learn from what's already been recorded. It'd take you a lifetime to appreciate what's been done. But it's great when something is out on its own and you hit on something new; when someone's hit on a pulse and it's not derivative. Very early Blur were really good and the first Supergrass EP was fabulous. That was the last time it got exciting for me. Damon [Albarn] gave me a cuddle at the Hootenanny recently and told me he loved me."

"I suppose this is another more upbeat song. I feel like I can remember it from one of those Best of the ‘80s compilations from when I was a teenager, but unlike a lot of the songs from that era, it has a lot of real lived experience and heart to it. “Although these songs are in chronological order, this had an influence on me when we were touring with Klaxons in 2007. At the end of the tour I stayed in New York to write on my own for a few weeks. I’d read that Mike Scott from The Waterboys was living on the East Side, and I would walk around that area every day listening to “The Whole of the Moon” hoping I’d bump into him. Which I never did, unfortunately. “I love the story behind this track. Essentially, one night Mike Scott had been out drinking and he met this girl. As he walked her back to her apartment, he told her he was a songwriter and she said “Well, then write me a song now.” He looked up at the sky and there was a half crescent of the moon, and he wrote the first half of this song on the walk home, just to impress this girl. I was so blown away by the romance of that. “I would sit on this bench at a dog park and think ‘How do I summon that greatness in a song.’ A few days before I flew home, I wrote “Two Doors Down”, sat on that bench in that dog park. And I feel I’ve got Mike Scott to thank for that."

"This is very similar to the Sly record in terms of concrete, abstract funk. When you hear it, it sounds really dense and dark. It doesn't sound organic, it sounds like it's from a concrete jungle. It never goes anywhere; it's in perpetual stasis, almost meditative. A few years ago, they released the sessions and takes, which is a bad thing to do because Miles would jam with his band and then carry on, sit and cut them up, mix them and turn it into Miles albums. It was very well arranged, and that was part of the fucking part of the aesthetic. Then to release the jam sessions for me was a bad idea because it's like releasing the out-takes of somebody's film. Whereas what Miles achieved with On The Corner was incredible. It's a big favourite of Primal Scream, we always used to play it on the tour bus. Miles was never about high energy, he's always cool and there's always a distance with him. All funk records are visceral and in-your-fucking-face, but On The Corner is quite cold too. It's an art funk record. He knew jazz music was old and didn't want to be stuck in the past. Miles was interested in young people and wanted to evolve with what young people were listening to. He was an open and receptive artist – that's the only way you can move forward with new energies and new ideas. We've learned from Miles Davis as a band, too: when you make music, you've got to make it for the future, even if you're not aware that you are."

"That would have come out in 1998 when I was around 17. My record collection at that point was mainly made up of U2, Radiohead, The Beatles, The Smiths. I hadn’t really been an indie kid in that sense of going to see bands and being part of that kind of world, because where we all grew up as a band, there just wasn’t a music scene at all! So we just spent our time making music, we never went to see much. Gomez is one of those total, bonafide, university, indie bands. It’s such an inventive record for a brand new band to burst onto the scene with. I loved the fact there were two singers with such contrasting voices. They’re all great songs, 'Here Comes The Breeze', 'Tijuana Lady'… it chimed in with where I was at the time, just getting out of school, smoking dope for the first time and experimenting with drugs. The album has that sense of youthful abandon. You can tell they were just fearless; maybe that’s what stopped them in the end from going on. I always feel that Gomez should have been a much more important band. I remember being up at University in Edinburgh, I got the National Express down to London one night, it was so uncomfortable, I got off at every stop and was getting smashed on this very strong weed and then going back on, and I had a proper old school Discman, and I was just listening to this Gomez record, up all night. I got to London, full of beans and was like, “We’ve gotta be this inventive!”"

"Here we are in 2016. Having enjoyed a rather robust excursion through the ‘70s, it seems like yesterday. As the clock swings around, things tend to reappear – but in this case revisiting the ‘70s is certainly not nostalgic. The ‘70s was a period of style, statement and fashion that probably should not be repeated. It was horrible! The oranges and the browns, the suede combos. I think Charles is challenging a prospective buyer to see through it, to get beyond the repellent quality of the horrible ‘70s, saying, ""If you dare buy this, you probably know to avoid what you're seeing. Let's get into what you're listening to."" 

From the ‘70s what was salvageable on the musical side was truly good. Here in London on Greek Street there was a really cool spot named Madame Jojo's. It was closed up not so very long ago. There was a great northern soul DJ named Keb Darge on Thursday nights who I got to be friendly with. Seventies pop music was intolerable but what we can now embrace as northern soul was something you could really sink your teeth into with satisfaction. He had the deepest record box on those Thursday nights. Recently I tried to take my lovely sweetheart Ms Gilligan to experience it but Keb was absent and instead there was a celebration of transvestism. We had a great time, but the following weekend we were at Camden Market and I bumped into none other than Keb who was still on a quest, trading records. The vinyl game is still vibrant and it's mostly alive at second-hand shops and flea markets. Vinyl trading reigns supreme."

"There are very few bands that I have more than two or three records by, and with Eno in particular I think everything that Brian Eno does best is on this record. I've tried to listen to other Eno records but I still get more from this one than from any of the others. There's just something about it. It's got this wonderful ramshackle element to it, but at the same time it's really experimental, and everything he does best is there. I remember listening to The Unforgettable Fire and the bits I listened to most were the bits that were obviously Eno overdubs or reflected his attitude coming through. And on that same tip it's already on Here Come The Warm Jets. Plus it's got some brilliant musicians playing on it. There's that classic guitar solo by Robert Fripp on 'Baby's On Fire'. Everybody stops talking when those 32 bars happen, or however long it is. And it moves from mood to mood. Every song on it has an atmosphere. 'Cindy Tells Me' is kind of flippant. You can imagine him writing that on a Sunday morning with a hangover, waking up in a stranger's apartment that happens to have a piano. Maybe he was thinking that Roxy was commercially successful - I wonder if I can be as well. And at the time he wasn't, of course: it was just, oh god, here's a weirdo record from that bloke that used to be in Roxy Music. But I think there are a lot of great pop tunes on there as well as it opening the door for a lot of experimentation."

"For me, it is the most alive and electric filmmaking. [Martin Scorsese is] obviously one of the greats, but he brought that ’70s filmmaking to 1990, which… I can’t believe it’s a 1990 film. I love gangster films and I love The Godfather, but I am a Goodfellas girl. I thought there was just so much captured in the masculinity of it and the relationships between men, the family dynamic, the structure of it, the mafia, that sort of hierarchy and camaraderie. I just think it’s one of the most exciting films ever made, of course. The writing is extraordinary, as is the improvisation of it. And seeing what he puts in a frame during a scene, like Joe Pesci telling the story, and you think it’s a funny scene when you realize it’s really just like these two setups over and over and that these… You sort of see the layout of the guys in the background who’s listening and the tension that he’s able to create by just hanging on something. That was something that I was trying to bring into [Hustlers]: in terms of how he treated violence, that was something that I felt about how to treat the nudity, in a way. So it was a touchstone for me in how to, not just approach anti-heroes or an underworld, but also just… What’s the difference between the gun and a body as being used, being weaponized? And an outfit, a bandage dress, being weaponized, you know? And the role that each of them play in that hustle and in the group."

"You have to remember that this came out when I was 10 years old, and my brothers started smoking pot and listening to that all the time. So we lived a lot of our young intense lives with all that cool Led Zeppelin shit playing. But when I hear Led Zeppelin IV, I guess that's where I discovered that idea of a rock group. So for me, Led Zeppelin never really evokes anything other than these dudes playing this bad ass music. Of course, it's impossible to really play like Led Zeppelin. I mean, they're a total fabrication of sounds and moods and little arranging techniques, little quirks. Jimmy Page is a master of that. It's a magical combination of, what, eight songs? When you listen to them altogether, which we do quite often, I don't see how anyone who loves music could listen to that and not think, 'Fuck, that's cool'. Such cool drumming, such cool effects on the guitars. Robert Plant... it's a weird way he sings. People have accepted it now, but it's a weird screech. So high, with so much velocity, he's really singing at the peak of his energy. That is driving the music. You can't take Robert Plant's screeching out of that and get the same effect. It's just what the song is. That song 'Rock N Roll' [sings] "been a long time since I rock 'n rolled"... if you don't sing it like that, it doesn't have the same effect. He screams that shit with that freaky echo on his voice, it's like some truth from beyond. It's fucking amazing. It's still amazing."

"I still hadn’t really bought a record, so I was still listening to things mainly on the radio, but also watching the chart rundown on “Top of the Pops.” That’s when I became aware of more grown-up music. I liked glam-rock; we’re not allowed to mention his name now, but Gary Glitter’s music was quite good. “Blockbuster!” by Sweet really takes me back to that time because that song starts with a siren. Whenever I hear that record, it immediately transports me back to being on the bumper cars at fun fair. It’s perfect music for that. I was into music like that, but my mum would still get babysitters, because my sister was 8 at the time. So we would have teenage girls come around the house, and one of them had a copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The record was broken—apparently, she had left it on the radiogram and somebody had sat on the lid—so you couldn’t play the first track on side one or side two. But she still brought it around. I had to go to bed for school the next day, but I listened to that record through the floorboards. I was actually quite frightened by the bits and bites of deranged laughing, and I wished that I had not listened to it. But I started to realize that music wasn’t just things that you listen to at fun fairs, that there was a more adult side to music. I think Pink Floyd’s music still stands up, actually. Still don’t like The Wall, though. Animals is as far as I got."

"Doesn’t life go by so quickly? God. 2003 was a big year for me. It’s when I got married and became a father—well, I’d like to point out that I’d got married nine months before I became a father. It’s illegal otherwise. That’s when I was living in Paris, too, so I was mentally living in a country where I didn’t really speak the language so well, and also exploring that terrain of being a father and wondering what I was going to do. At that point, I thought, Well, maybe that’s it: I’ll stop music now at 40. That’s like a nice, round figure. Maybe I’ll try to do something else with the rest of my life. It was a transitionary time, and when I think about the music I was listening to, I think about the music that my wife at the time listened to, like Cat Power’s You Are Free and Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Master and Everyone, which has a profile of him and his resplendent beard on the cover. I think that she was even playing that in the birthing room when my son was born. I’ve tried not to influence my son with music. I mean, there’s music around in the house, but I’ve tried not to indoctrinate him because if you try and push a child in a certain direction, they’ll always go in the opposite one. I do remember him being in the room when a Velvet Underground record was on, and I was thinking, I wonder what his brain is making of this. But he didn’t cry, not even when “The Black Angel’s Death Song” came on."