"It’s hard for me to narrow it down to my favorite directors and favorite actors, too, but I love Matt Dillon. I love Beautiful Girls and I love Flamingo Kid — he’s responsible for a lot of my favorites, but I’m gonna have to pick Drugstore Cowboy. I saw it when I was a kid and I felt like it was such a different culture than any that I’d ever been exposed to, and I felt like instantly I was a part of it — even though I had no frame of reference. I mean, I wasn’t a “kid,” I was 14 or 15. I had started getting into, you know, that sort of pretentious high school literate phase where you start reading, like, Kerouac and Ginsberg and, I don’t know — I loved that world, that romanticized, thuggy, kind of petty crime world. I really romanticized it myself and just wanted to be a part of that world; there was something exciting about that for me. And I love the way it’s shot. I love the drugged out scenes; I love the way [Gus Van Sant] shoots with cut-outs, those kind of simple, free-floating cut-outs to convey the psychedelic scenes. It was one of my very first exposures to that style of filmmaking that was a lot more patient and took its time and allowed itself to breathe. And from there I got into, like Hal Hartley and the independent movies of the ’90s. But my love of that type of film all started with Drugstore Cowboy."

"It may seem like a change of tack, but it’s not actually. This is his most processed album. This is what I’m a fan of John Martyn for and something I don’t think anyone else has ever done before. It’s that sort of processed acoustic guitar that features a lot on my solo record, where the guitars are so heavily processed. John did this brilliantly. I saw him tour this album – it was one of the first gigs I ever saw as a youngster. It was astonishing hearing him making these beautiful soundscapes on a battered old Martin guitar through a delay line and a fuzz box. Not only was he a master of the guitar, he was also a master of processed sound. He used the voice in the way, again, that was like a tone generator. The words were barely audible but they made tones, in the way that Miles Davis might play his horn. Sometimes he’d sing in a completely different key. It was all about where he positioned the sound and the timbre. I don’t think he ever released another record that explored the acoustic process in the way that he did here. I know people that worked with him and had his effects pedals – I tried to get hold of them for this project (Edgeland) but they were long gone. It was a reference point for me for this album. I wanted to take that concept on, and Inside Out was my jumping off point."