"I’d be hard pressed to choose from those early records, but 1999 was a big departure from the first three and that double album was a massive undertaking. Those records where you don’t know how the hell the writer did the thing are the ones that will always have a massive mystique and weight with me. Probably the casual fan of my bass playing or the rhythm section of Guns wouldn’t be able to pick up on it, but me and Steven really worked on this groove by playing along to Prince as well as Sly and the Family Stone. We would sit in the rehearsal room and crank the music on this ghetto blaster and just play along and emulate some of that stuff. It was ‘85 and no-one knew what was going to be next, there was a big question mark. Punk was sort of in its death throes, there was this – if you ask me – really bad metal that didn’t relate to anybody, then the rest of it was up to us, people who were our age 19, 20, 21, whatever and we knew it. So we tried to go a different route and that 1999 record was a big influence on me becoming a bass player."

"This is where I came in with Queen — somehow I missed the first two albums. Our bass player always looks at me like I’ve got three heads when I say, “no, I never saw Seven Seas Of Rhye on Top of the Pops. I must have been out playing football that particular week. But when I first heard Killer Queen I thought, “wow, this is different. You could tell they were rock band, but you could also tell they were much more than a rock band. It had elements of vaudeville, which is fantastic to be able to bring on board, and when I heard the album there was even more things, like Bring Back That Leroy Brown, but at the same time you had things like Brighton Rock hammering away but with Freddie Mercury sing away in this weird falsetto that sounded like Sparks. It’s an amazing record. Now I’m Here is still one of the best rock songs ever written. It was very varied, very Queen in the sense of setting a standard that they then had to follow. It wasn’t like an AC/DC record where you get 10 songs that are very similar. This could have been four different bands on one record, with four different personalities making the music."

"When I discovered them, we went to Australia shortly after and I said 'can we get these guys to open for us?' I was quickly told, 'no, they're way bigger than you in Australia. Don't be silly'. We haven't played together. I got to see them once at the Cake Shop in New York. I don't know what it is but this record kind of reminds me of the sort of rawest parts of AC/DC or the most loose parts of Pink Flag. The singer is pretty unhinged. When I saw them play, it was a thing where you could see the singer looking at Mikey, the main guy and guitar player who I think writes all the music. The singer was watching him to find out when he was meant to sing because he didn't really have that straight. It was kind of a thing where Mikey would nod and the singer would start singing. Sort of a go and stop kind of thing. I don't think anyone particular obsessed over the form and lyrics of these songs. Maybe they did but it doesn't sound like they did and there's something great about that. I think they recorded this record in a day. And it's got that vibe. It's loose and it's powerful and punk rock and totally real. "

"Me and James were obsessed with the NME ‘100 Best Albums Of All Time’ in the mid 80s, so we started buying as many as we could - Marquee Moon, Blonde On Blonde, The Clash... some of them we had anyway, but then there were things like Pet Sounds, which was really high, and when you’re 14 you think of the Beach Boys as fucking idiots going “doo wop”, don’t you? We both got What’s Going On and I think it’s the first time I realised, in an exotic way, that politics could translate. Through colour, through country - you could still feel the desperation of someone else even though it was your first exposure to music like that. Obviously my Mum and Dad had tons of records, but the intimacy of playing that in your bedroom and being transported to another world of the same anger you were feeling, but then in such a graceful way. ‘Inner City Blues’, the title track, ‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’. There’s lot’s of brackets - lot’s of songs with brackets. I love that idea of brackets. I love the cover. You can still put it on today, and obviously in the studio we have lots of vinyl and a record player - you put that one in particular and it drifts, it seduces you but it also stimulates."

"I was listening to this a lot when Supergrass were making Diamond Hoo Ha over in Berlin. This was the record of that album for me and I was listening to it over and over again. I love the rawness and the vocal performances. When I first heard it, it was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It was different and I love Tom Verlaine's vocal quality; it's really androgynous and like the male Patti Smith. It had that delivery and I love it. I've never been drawn into the alternate tunings that they used and so I've never delved into that. I'm probably not enough of a nerd about other people's music to do that. But their playing is never pompous or self-indulgent. It wasn't guitar duelling but Television are very sensitive to their instruments. Everything had its place but I think I was drawn to it because of the band I was in. This was what we aspired to in terms of Mick [Quinn] being a brilliant bass player so we let him speak with what he was doing. And you couldn't tread over Danny because he had these amazing bass fills and we had that internal dialogue where everybody got to speak. The best bands are the ones that connect that way and are really on fire when there's that understanding between each other."

"I was 11 when this film came out and it was the first time I ever went to see a film twice in one week. It blew me away and changed my life. Not just the film, but largely [György] Ligeti's atonal choral pieces. This discordant, sometimes beautiful, intertwining of voices, that were dark and then beautiful and then disturbing and then uplifting. I went out and bought the album, and then put it on my record player in my room and shut myself in my wardrobe with a flashing light and spent hours in there. I wanted to shut myself off from the world and immerse myself completely in this extraordinary sound. And I went on to be an artist that built environments and quadrophonic sound spaces – purely based on this experience. And years later, when we came to write the score for Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, I said, "do you think 2001 can be referenced?" and Danny said, "absolutely", and that was just like heaven for me. This album is at the core of where my head’s at. One minute it will be playing some Brahms and then it’s playing this beautiful, yet discordant, choral music and I think like that now. This is the rhythm of my bones. Something for the future is to score for a choir."

"I'd been into music for as long as I can remember, from being four years old. My dad bought me a record player when I was 11, and I went out and bought three albums: I had those Beatles double albums, the red and the blue, '62-'66 and '66-'70, I bought those, and I also bought Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones. That was the first Stones album that I bought. I actually wore it out, and parts of it became unplayable, even with halfpenny pieces on top of the stylus. For me, the Stones, when they pulled away from the Beatles' influence and became their own thing, it started with Beggars Banquet. It's those four albums - Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Exile and Sticky Fingers, I think are the greatest years of the Rolling Stones as an individual, this is what we do, we're not following the Beatles any more. And they did it with such glory that I could easily have chosen [another] one of those four albums for the same reason. Once again we seem to be talking about unsung heroes, one of the great things about those Stones albums is the brilliant engineering by Glyn Johns; I think Andy Johns was involved as well, but the engineering on those records is just awesome, awesome, awesome."

"Similar time to The Human League obviously - it's just another synth-pop classic. It's when O.M.D. still had a much more experimental edge and yet similarly to the League, they had some stonking tunes, the two 'Joan Of Arc' ones, and 'Souvenir's on that as well, which I absolutely adore. I remember I bought the single of 'Souvenir' and probably the single record that I have played most in my life. I just kept it on repeat on our old record player in the house. That would have been in Enniskillen Woolworth's, probably along with Roland Rat or something - everybody buys shit records at the time as well and accidentally buys good ones when you're that young. I hold all of the above in mind when writing music and yet you're also trying to expunge them from your mind as well! It's a very complicated process - you can't help being the sum of your parts and you can't help little bits of the things you love coming out. If a certain chord does a certain thing in one of those songs that makes you kind of tingle, then you're looking for the tingle, but you're not looking to do it with the same chord, if you know what I mean! So you might use the same kind of mechanics but not the same notes."

"I think there is an argument to be made for Wire being one of the greatest ever bands to come out of the UK. They have become a band to namedrop over the last 20 years and rightly so. In 1977 or 1978, me and my mates were wagging school and listening to whatever new records were out at the time, and that would be invariably punk records. A couple of my friends were into The Stranglers, which never really did it for me. I was listening to The Only Ones and Generation X and things like that. When [punk compilation] The Roxy London WC2 came out you had to have it and spend your hard-earned pocket money on it, but it was a disappointing, shouty affair. It was badly recorded with a number of bands who didn't do much for me. However, it had 'Lowdown' by Wire on it and the song stood out by a million miles. There was brains and originality behind the song. When 154 came out it was so startling as it was so ahead of its time. Well, it was of the time but broke away from the norm, which was very much still rooted in an aggressive rock & roll heartland. Wire really stretched sounds and included keyboards on their records, which at the time was a very brave move. I am trying my hardest not to use the word 'arty' but in this case, they owned that word. I had left school at that time and moved away from my parents and was living on my own. That period was key for me as a person and Wire's approach to guitar was just something I couldn't ignore. It was a real pointer away from the blues-based guitar playing which dominated pop music - including punk - since rock music had started. As a young guitar player, discovering 154 showed me a world that was an alternative way of looking at the instrument. It has stuck with me all the way through my career."