"I love Roland Kirk's stuff, it's always got these mad quirky bits in it, a bit like Mingus or like Monk, but very unique to him. It's a really sweet record, really beautiful, and again it has a link to nature and spirituality. It's deep but it has a lot of humour. Charming arrangements and melodies and a real lightness of touch. I love all those things where you hear him growl on the flute or shout or let off one of his conches."

"That was the first of his records that I jumped in on. It's a good record to jump in. For starters, he's like a one-man orchestra and he plays three saxes at once, but that kind of overshadows him as a musician in some ways. It's the emotional punch in his playing that's the important thing here. His personality really comes across and he also sounds impish at times, just like a naughty boy. Or like a street fighter. He's got so many aspects to his personality that he really does wear them on his sleeves. He can take things like a Rogers and Hammerstein tune and he can turn it into something else. The thing with jazz is that people think you have to approach it thinking really deeply, but with Rahsaan Roland Kirk the music is so immediate. It should impact you immediately. He's got a pop sensibility but he gets into some really deep stuff as well."

"My eldest brother had Closer. I was listening to that from about ten-years-old onwards. Once I started to save money – working on a farm with my other brother, doing the milk round with him – that was the first time I had my own cash floating around and that money used to go on records. Unknown Pleasures was one of my first purchases. That was a key moment for me. It was my record. It hadn't been passed down. It was a completely new record in the household. That was me getting that experience first-hand, and it was such a brilliant record to have that with. The sleeve is another Peter Saville classic. The production on it is incredible. I know the band weren't happy with it, but to me it's a complete masterpiece. The use of space is evocative of Lancashire I think. The whole thing has this dank… I'm going to wheel out all the clichés now about empty warehouses and all that, but it is familiar territory for me where I'm from. Those smashed glasses at the end of 'I Remember Nothing', and the synth drones. I think that was around the time I got my first Roland synthesiser and it was another polarising moment. Something very powerful crystallised about what I wanted to do at that point. All I was capable of doing with that synth was making this huge powerful drone sound. It pointed the way. Having that induction – sat with the headphones on late at night... Music in the seventies was full of opposites. The stuff we heard on the radio was the friendly aspects of music. I wasn't looking for that. I was looking to be disturbed by it and that's something that I haven't really lost throughout my life."