"I just love how romantic Robert Smith is. ’80s Robert Smith is one of my dream men. It’s such a tense, emotional song, even though it’s optimistic and happy. I just love the way he sings. I find his voice so haunting, even when he’s singing happy melodies."

"I love Patti Smith and the story of her beginnings in New York City with her then boyfriend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It's a fascinating look at that period of time and at two very creative people who inspired a whole generation of artists. Smith continues to be so relevant, particularly given our political climate."

"The Cure was my favourite band. The Cure covered my walls, they were on the T-shirts I wore, Robert Smith was who I was going to marry when I grew up. At 15, that's how I defined myself. I owned all the B-sides and rarities and all the bootlegs and went to see them live whenever I could. I still look back at the Cure catalogue as one of my ultimate musical educators, especially because I feel like Robert Smith, as a songwriter, went on so many tangents and wrote so much weird shit. He was clearly a masterful pop songwriter, but he was coming up with stuff that was strange and experimental, and then stuff that was really dark and brooding, and then really funny and poppy. The Cure have this reputation as the glum, sad band, but I never experienced them that way. I experienced the music of the Cure as this adventure in songwriting. Boys Don't Cry was the first record I got, which was a great record to start with. But after that, The Top – what a weird record! Such a departure from the punky, poppy stuff. So I was totally hooked, and totally fascinated by Robert Smith as a person, by what was going on in his head. Any literary reference he made, I ran out and bought the book. I was obsessed."

"I was probably about 17 [when I first heard it] and this one for me is very much about falling in love. I didn't realise for ages how much it must have influenced me because of the phasey synths, the layers of phasey guitar, the romance and the gloominess and depression, but within that depression there's always those bursts of euphoria and that sad/happy line. In music I tend to really enjoy the sad/happy dichotomy; they've been put together and it breaks your heart but you love it at the same time. You want to cry but you want to smile, and I think really hearing phasey guitars, massive intros, really lush, long droning synths, and Robert Smith for me, on 'Lullaby', it's just such great storytelling: "Quietly he laughs and shaking his head / Creeps closer now, closer to the foot of the bed". It's just like weird, dark, gothic literature or weird Roald Dahl stories or kids' stories about adult anxiety but told through Charlotte's Web-like fables and storytelling. 'Untitled' has harmonium and stuff and then it kicks into massively reverby drums, quite shoegazy, and 'Disintegration' is such a great song, I absolutely love it, and there's loads of really long intros where he just sings at the end and when you hear him yelping, "yeeeeah!". I felt like him and Björk at the time were both really exploring feral, expressive vocal sounds - and I think Robert Smith is a really underrated vocalist, not even underrated but I think he's like [mimics Robert Smith] and it's really free and endearing, just very unique I think."

"With Depeche Mode, the sounds intrigued me, but I never really cared about the band. I loved those records, and I collected them, and pretty much had every Depeche Mode studio record, but I never saw them live and I never wanted to marry Martin Gore. That was my next-door neighbour. She had Martin Gore, and I had Robert Smith. As alternative teenagers, we had to pick our alliances carefully. I liked Depeche Mode, but I loved the Cure. That was a very important distinction for me."

"I found out about the Cardiacs and discovered A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window and On Land And In The Sea simultaneously. They’re very hard to find now, the CDs are going for upwards of 60 or 70 quid on eBay. It’s progressive music, but done in a really mental way. It sounds like one guy’s mind being acted out by some willing and accomplished musicians. It’s really insane. There are loads of tempo changes. I think Tim Smith’s voice sounds a little like Robert Smith, but in a much more manic way. I think that’s what really speaks to me [laughs]. It’s almost like what progressive rock is made for. You expect progressive rock to be manic. The production sounds a little bit more like a real band on On Land And In The Sea, but on A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window there’s a song on it called ‘R.E.S.’ which is just seven minutes of strange music. It’s like 60s easy listening music but it’s still definitely prog. I was criticised once actually. We did a trip into the rain forest in Costa Rica last year and I DJed it, and afterwards everyone was like, “yeah that was great… maybe too much Cardiacs though.” It’s a floor filler, but a floor emptier as well – and it’s hard to know where the threshold is! On those albums there are a lot of people called Smith, and I’m not sure whether they’re brothers or cousins or aunties or whatever, but there’s a saxophonist, bassist, guitarist, keys, and it’s all very symphonic. More symphonic than you’d expect."