"I got to love this album when I was 18, working in a second hand clothes shop in Glasgow, where one of the guys I worked with played it constantly. It was the first time I had heard music that felt like genuine contemporary protest music. The combination of Chuck D’s informed eloquence and unashamed confrontational stance was so potent. Here was a guy name-checking Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the same breath as Coltrane and Anthrax. It was revolutionary in every sense. It felt dangerous. These guys had the FBI tapping their phones and were taking on the behemoth of the US establishment. While in retrospect the S1Ws may be the campest paramilitaries in history, the imagery of guerrilla conflict intensified the sense of resisting persecution. Like the best groups, it felt like a gang, too. Flav the joker, Chuck the boss, Terminator-X voiceless, but ever-present. Tight. Then there was the music. That fragmented repetition. Those bursts of brass and breakbeats, squealing like sirens against stolen guitars. Amazing. It didn’t sound like anything else. While Chuck D and his cartoon foil Flavor Flav had the lyrical articulacy, Terminator-X, Professor Griff and the Bomb Squad matched it musically. Their imagination was in context – how to take something from its original context, place it against something else out of context to create something way more powerful than either in isolation. In many ways, I still see this LP as the pinnacle of rap. Of course it is of its time and sonic trends advanced, but for sheer inventiveness and lyricism it has never been matched. It felt like rap was violently booting the world into a better direction – a brief flash of genius before it became mired in the vocabulary of egoism, misogyny and avarice. There have been great pinnacles since, but nothing matches this moment."

"With the compilation albums, I am cheating. It meant I didn't know which album to choose. I sometimes DJ. When I DJ, I use a system to take people into an ecstatic trance through music. I might start with Brian Eno and some ambient music and then move to other genres. I might use classical music or Indian music. But, invariably, when I get to the third rhythm of trance and when I really want to take people into that state, I am almost forced to go to Underworld again and again. Underworld brought together song and dance in a way that I have not heard anyone match. The Chemical Brothers are great and New Order are obviously great, but Underworld take me to a tribal edge that is so ferocious and yet, simultaneously, so intelligent. 'Rez' is one of my favourite songs – even though that is not one of their most tribal. 'Moaner' and 'Born Slippy' are their more tribal tunes. I find their textures and landscapes and vocals – which don't get in the way and help you lose yourself when you are dancing – make Underworld difficult to surpass. I was so proud of them when they got to do the Olympics in 2012. I felt that was their due. I contacted them before the Olympics and had a lovely communication with them. I told them that I thought they were the most revolutionary and iconoclastic band of the last 20 years. Then, about a year later, Danny Boyle used them during the opening ceremony. I saw them play recently at the Hollywood Bowl and I danced so much that I badly twisted my ankle and couldn't walk for about two weeks. It was still worth it. Dancing injuries are to be worn like medals of honour."