"I was aware of who Black Flag were and I had heard people talking about them. I was in Exeter at a family funeral. I would have been about 14. I nipped out to a record store which was near to where the cathedral where the funeral was and I walked in as a nerdy little dickhead in my suit that I was wearing for the church service. The guy gave me a bit of a look and I asked him if he had anything by Black Flag and he pretty much fell off his chair. I loved that album to death. The beginning to Revenge is still the best start to any song written ever He sold me this album and I kind of knew I was looking for something that sounded like that at that point. It was becoming apparent to me that hardcore was the area of punk that I was particularly interested in. I loved that album to death. The beginning to Revenge is still the best start to any song written ever. I think about Black Flag a lot when I’m writing, in the sense of brevity is the soul of wit. Fix Me is my favourite Black Flag song and it's 42 seconds long. Every time I write a song that is longer than 42 seconds, which is all of my songs, there’s part of me that thinks I’m wasting my time or dawdling."

"Sister Lovers is one of the most beautiful records. It's probably the record I've listened to more than any other. It's just a damaged and fractured, beautiful, plaintive, poetic record. And it still retains its sense of mystery. When we first went to Memphis we met Jim Dickinson [producer] and I asked him loads of questions on how he recorded Sister Lovers. We actually went to the studios where they recorded the album twice. We were absolutely obsessed by that record. Dickinson told stories about the recording process and allowing Alex Chilton to be himself. There's no one like them in the rock canon. There's a lot of pain in the record, a howl, anguish and pain. It's the sound of defeat. But there's also a duality of victory and defeat too, which is really rare in music but it makes it so appealing and attractive. Alex Chilton could go from The Box Tops to Big Star – the first two albums were pop rock, Byrds-y commercial songs. Then, he made Sister Lovers, which was like an art record. Pure art. There's nothing commercial about it. No one would release it. It was recorded in '74 to '75 and was released in 1978, after punk. This was because he was ahead of his time. It's only in the last 15 to 20 years that people have picked up on Sister Lovers. A record like no other."

"I got a cassette from a cousin of mine that had The Offspring, Smash, on one side and Nirvana's Bleach on the other. That was definitely the wake-up call of rebellion and antagonism, but the first record I really got into from thereon was Surfer Rosa. It felt so alien but so familiar. It really clicked on a bone marrow level that felt like it had pre-existed for me. I bought Death To The Pixies at the same time on tape from HMV in Oxford and I just became obsessed with that record. I listened to it again recently and it reminded me particularly about how I could connect with Frank Black's lyrics despite not being aware of any real narrative when I was much younger. I don't think Foals would exist without the Pixies. I love the oddness and the strangeness of the Hispanic/punk/pop influence - it should be wrong, it shouldn't work but it does, really well. More recently I re-listened to his lyrics and appreciated how humorous they are, which reminded me that things don't need to be too obvious or narrative-based, they can be just fragments of thought. It opened the gateway into everything that then consumed me for the next ten years (Oxes, Albini, Sonic Youth, Godspeed - the American guitar alt/post-hardcore/post-rock world). Without Surfer Rosa I may have stayed with Nirvana and The Offspring…"

"I thought we ought to have one classical album as I do play a lot of classical music at home. I thought about Chopin’s Nocturnes but they didn’t change anything. The Rite Of Spring really was, for me, the first punk album. It was the most uncompromising vision. In the period it was done, no one was doing anything like Stravinsky. He was writing parts for instruments that didn’t have those notes, so they had to have new ones made with extra notes so the orchestra could play that piece. That’s forward thinking. The whole story of the making of the album is so fantastic – that Stravinsky has no money and Coco Chanel comes along and invites him to live at his house and Stravinsky sits in a room alone writing all these parts for all these instruments. It’s extraordinary and a remarkable achievement. Then, the fact that on the opening night in a swishy Parisian theatre the audience hated it. They think it is the most terrible row and now it is acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century. It’s too good a story and I admire his commitment and his inventiveness and his absolute passion to making that record work. You listen to it and think "how did anyone ever do that?" Anyone who hasn’t heard The Rite Of Spring and likes music should really take a listen."

"As a drummer, Klaus Dinger was important to me: [he taught me] how to make one riff last a lifetime! It's a great riff though, don't get me wrong. Neu! was absolutely brilliant; it's another record where the first time you buy it and put it on, you think 'I've never heard anything like this before'. I was into Krautrock and that's why I bought it - I bought anything that came out of Germany - but Neu! were just completely out there. I had no idea who was in the band, there was just a big 'Neu!' image on the front… it was striking, kind of punk. The way that they used cut up music, and bits of ambient sound… as soon as I heard it, I thought 'If I ever start a band, I'd like them to sound a bit like this - as adventurous as this'. A lot of Krautrock was trying to plough its own furrow, but there were other bits that were trying to Germanize Western things. And the odd thing about it is, I never knew that Michael Rother lived in Wilmslow for a time - which is just around the corner from me - in the 70's. I was watching a Krautrock documentary and he was saying: “I've always been surrounded by flowing water, there's always been a river - the Rhine, the Elbe, the Bollin.” And I said: “Hang on, did he just say the Bollin!? That's just down the road!”"

"I don't know much about her. We're going to be playing some shows with her, so I'm holding her in this great realm of mystery until then. The drummer is fucking amazing, Zach Hill - he played with that band Hella. They're playing this fucking insane music. I don't even know what their set up is like. I don't know what she's like, what her group is like. And in a way that's why I'm enjoying it so much at this time, because it's still new to me. You can go on the internet and find out everything about a group and before you know it you're meeting them, and that's a great thing about my life. But there's also times when you want to be suspended in the mystery of what you're listening to, and that's where I'm at with her right now. And what a weird name... Is that really her name? I like it when people can be technical, or use elements of technique. I love technique. I think technique has probably more beauty in it that the way I play - the punk rock, anything-goes kinda way. But if you're lucky, like Marnie Stern, you can do both. You get this ridiculous shit where they're all trying to play these intricate little bits together, and then, because they're weirdos, you get this other kind of music that you haven't heard before."