"I picked Steve Reich because I think it changed the parameters of how I thought about music. At the time I was 17, playing in The Edmund Fitzgerald and I hadn't really ever been aware of modern classical or minimalism and it inspired me and also reinforced stuff that I intuitively liked in music, such as points of sounds and structural emphasis. The band Youthmovies introduced me to Reich - they had a quite formative effect on me in a sense that, up until then, I still listened to music in a tribal way, as in I had to identify with whatever subculture was going on, so I listened to Skinny Puppy and really plunged my identity into that, for example. I was in that teenage phase of tying up your fashion and your self identity with music. They also played me Gwen Stefani, Missy Elliott and Stars Of The Lid and they showed me that you didn't have to only identify with one tribe - they broke that way of thinking down. So that record was really important. And on a more simplistic level, it's just stunning. It's the kind of record you can listen to in any environment, unbound by context - it induces a trance-like state. It's a particularly good record to listen to when you're on the Underground, it's soothing - the perfect soundtrack to seeing thousands of people walking past you. He's one of my top five favourite musicians of all time."

"That's like a bookend thing really, because it's one of the latest records I bought, only two months ago. Side one is the best side, sometimes he gets a bit busy, but the first track starts so sparsely, it's incredible. I saw Terry Riley recently when I was playing at the Primavera Festival. Everybody ends up staying in the same hotel near the site and a lift door opened and I saw him and he went 'hello Jarvis', and that was a very proud moment because I've only met him once before. Mark Webber, who was the guitarist in Pulp, he knew Terry Riley a bit and we actually did a performance of 'In C' with him at the Barbican years and years ago, and he remembered me from that. I was really touched. I think it's a really romantic record - none of these records have to be for any purpose but I have to say if you want to get it on with someone, it's a good one to put on. When Mark first introduced me to minimalism I thought 'there's not much happening here', but it makes you listen to music in a different way, you're listening to the actual sound of it. That expands your mind. Persian Surgery Dervishes is using that weird tuning, with loads more notes, it's questioning the idea of the Western scale, saying we can find notes within the notes. It's a long way from pop music, it's exciting, it's good to know you can be enthralled by music in which not very much happens. 
"