"If I had to pick my favourite record of this year it'd be Black Noise, I've certainly listened to it the most this year. It's another of those records that I can listen to whatever I'm doing - it's borderline background music if you know what I mean, but sometimes if you just put it on really loud it's totally hypnotic. I never thought I'd like techno music, but this really brought me in. Normally when I hear 4.4 beats I just put it in one category, but the sonics of this are amazing - bits of it sound like little pieces of metal, there are all these organic, earthy sounds. It's programmed noise. There's a dark edge to it, but not too dark. Also I love the artwork, it really pairs with the music, really made me listen to it in greater depth."

"For me, this is the best guitar fuzz sound on record; it’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve been trying to get that sound and I’ve never got close, I’ve no idea what it is, apparently The Music Machine made their own pedals. They’re well-known to people who are into garage, psych-y stuff and I discovered them via Nuggets or Rubble compilation, or something like that. It’s strange, I love that song - I’m not hugely keen on the vocal but it doesn’t really matter to me on this song, it suits its purpose. It’s like the opposite of The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone’s voice. It’s not sweet and melodic, it’s gritty and punky and not my usual sort of thing but it screams attitude to me. It’s the sleaziest thing I’ve ever heard and it’s very, very inspiring for production. It’s the whole groove of it, the whole thing, but it all comes back to that guitar fuzz sound. With bands like The Beatles there’s so many books that go into the recording techniques, but not so with The Music Machine. Personally, I’ve learnt that the problem with fuzz tones is that, for example, people say you can get the fuzz sound from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ by buying a Maestro Fuzz-Tone pedal, but I’ve seen countless demo’s of them and it sounds nothing like it, because it all depends on all the elements, like whether the guitar went straight into the board or if it was played through a broken speaker, or any number of things. There’s no way of knowing for sure. Maybe it’s because it was the ‘60s. Things weren’t documented but I still do it now, I get a sound and I won’t make notes on it because it’s like, “Why would I sit there and make notes on exactly what I did?”, so it becomes kind of lost and when people ask, “How did you get that sound?”, I don’t remember. Maybe it’s something that’s meant to happen - almost like you’re not meant to know, for ‘Trouble’ maybe it was the sound of the leather gloves they wore. The Music Machine had a very strange look, I think the singer wore a single leather glove and the rest of them wore roll necks and medallions."

"This is probably my absolute favourite record ever made. I remember driving to my friend's house and he put 'The Sad Skinhead' on I remember thinking, ""What the hell was that?"" When he said it was Faust, I had heard of them but had no idea what they sounded like. I remember going off and trying to 'find' the band on my own – I wanted to discover them for myself and not have people tell me which was the best record, or which were the best songs to listen to. I wanted to go off and discover Faust for myself. It was when I listened to Faust IV from beginning to end that I was absolutely blown away. It's playful, it's beautiful, it's exciting – it starts with a 10-minute Krautrock song and then goes into this weird, all-over-the-place song which has no rules. And I love that. The conviction of it is tongue-in-cheek in places, which I am almost jealous of - it even ends with a song called 'It's A Bit Of A Pain'! For me it has the best attitude of any album I have heard. Also, I must mention the extraordinary sound of everything – the placement of all the little weird guitar parts. It's almost like you can close your eyes and pinpoint where everything is coming in. There is so much I love about the record but its attitude is the most prevalent thing. I hope it has seeped into my music. It's what I try go for when I am in the studio – to try and record in as short amount of time, so that I can achieve a sense of spontaneity. I cannot achieve that during lengthy recording sessions – it would iron all of that stuff out. For me, recording really quickly means you can keep some of that playful attitude that I so love on this record."

"The drum sound! The greatest bass sound ever! The rawness of it. ‘Isolation’ I absolutely love, and obviously we covered ‘Working Class Hero’. It’s really tight but there’s something about it that feels like they haven’t rehearsed much either - you see the film and they’re all coming in on the hoof. There’s some kind of bluesy nastiness - and I’m not a fan of the blues either - but there’s something about it, John Lennon’s guitar is really good on it, I think his guitaring was underrated actually. There’s so much savage bitterness there, ‘Mother’, just to start with the fucking bell chiming. I love that savageness. He’s having a go at McCartney, but he does it with so much wit, he can always glide over the top of it. I wish I had that ability, not to always drag it down with pure pettiness. “I don't believe in Elvis. I don't believe in Zimmerman/ I don't believe in Beatles” - I don’t think he could get “The Beatles” in, so it’s just “don’t believe in Beatles”. I love that album. There was a lot of that on [Wire’s solo album] I Killed The Zeitgeist actually, and there’s a lot on this album. I tried to learn that critical self-examination. I think John was a lot more psychoanalytical, he could use what he considered help, where as I was fucking on my own."