"This comes from a place that keeps coming back into my life, which is Chicago. So many records from Chicago resonate in my Mancunian hellhole! When we were picking up Sun Ra records in the bargain bins for 50p with all the corners cut off, you'd go for the cover of the sleeves because on the back they'd show them playing these car parks somewhere with all this pageantry and all these weird electronic keyboards. And you'd be like, ""Oh! That looks really interesting!"" You'd put it on and it sounded like this odd, aged, Biblical music; like the Seven Tribes crossing the Sahara or something. It's very percussive – there huge sections where it's just percussion clattering away, and then you'd be hit by this kind of big band swing thing. And you'd be, ""Oh! That's really odd!"" and then there'd be an electric piano solo in the middle of that; it was just totally confusing! This was one of those records that sat around for a while and there'd be maybe one or two track that you went for. Gradually, the album would then open up for you. And then your friends would have another Sun Ra album and these things gathered together. There was a gig in Manchester in 1981, and it was Sun Ra with what must have been a 20-piece band and they had [saxophonist] John Gilmore and [singer/violinst] June Tyson in it – the classic version of the band, really – and it was like a three-hour concert. The epiphany that came with it was they did this enormous timeline that included music from the 1930s, which then went all the way through to freeform electronic wailing and synthesizer solos that went on for 15 minutes, as well as battles between trombones and really structured compositional things. A few years ago, it was Sun Ra's centenary and there was a festival in Liverpool and we put a band together to do a Sun Ra tribute. So we learnt a lot of stuff from the Impulse label records – the 50s Chicago stuff – and you can get all the music from the Smithsonian. We put in enough time to making it sound good and it was a really rewarding experience to live in that music for a while. [Saxophonist] Marshall Allen once stayed at my house. He saw all the instruments lying around and he says, ""Oh, you play?"" And I was like, ""Sort of"" because at that point, imposter syndrome kicks in, but he was like, ""Can you play two notes?"" and I'm going, ""Yeah, yeah"" and he said, ""Well, let's do it!"" We ended up setting up a recording session and we made an album in the evening, and then went out and had kebabs! But it's interesting how popular Sun Ra's records have become over time, because back then, they were practically giving them away."

"All the Presidents Men. Alan Pakula. I lived in Washington, D.C. all throughout Watergate and my mother worked for the government so she was hyper-aware of Nixon and all of this. The Watergate [Hotel] was a bike ride away from my home. It was just a building in a series of buildings that you drove by all the time. And the Howard Johnson’s where the plumbers all had their dinner before break-in? I used to eat at that Howard Johnson’s. This was a local story for me. The Woodward and Bernstein book is a read and a half, and I’ve watched that film I don’t know how many times — it is just perfect. I watched it like 10 days ago. I watched it on the Drake Passage on my way to the Antarctic peninsula. That’s the last time I saw it, like three weeks ago. It was then as it is now — a beautiful piece of work. It’s suspenseful. Again, there’s Hoffman. I guess I come off as some massive Hoffman fan. It’s merely coincidence, although I do think he’s great. Him and Redford together are just amazing. And again you see the genius of Hoffman. You see just how ready-to-go Robert Redford is as an actor. Handsome, leading guy, believable as hell. And that whole cast — I just love seeing older people in films who don’t necessarily look good, but they’re good actors. And that the entire weather-beaten, hard-chewed staff at the post that were cast in that film. They sit around and have those meetings, “Well screw that; what d’you got?” They’re just these tough newsmen, and I love it. They took down Nixon, these two young guys. I hung out with Bernstein; he’s just a true maniac. It’s an honor to hang out with him. I said, “Man, it’s an honor to meet you.” And he said, “I’m gonna tell my son that and boy, he’s gonna respect me now.” [Laughing] I’m like, “Yeah, right!” It speaks of a huge moment in American history when every American now had proof that you cannot trust your government, that you’d be stupid to trust the government. Like yes, vote. Elect these people. But you gotta keep a very Jeffersonian jaundiced eye on every politician: the ones you voted for, the ones you voted against, the ones you say you like. As Gore Vidal said, by the time anyone gets to the Oval Office, they’ve been bought and sold at least ten times. And All the President’s Men is a case study of that. Hal Holbrook’s character, you find out 30 years later, that dude did exist. It was Deep Throat. That was a real guy. And the fact that these little clandestine meetings happened in a place I may have well pumped my skateboard by makes that film very relevant to me."

"Ooh! Oooh! It's almost like [an album] that's never been repeated. Bryan Ferry has come close but it was a moment in time for them as a band. It could have been a nightmare to make for all I know but it's beautiful and incredible. At the time I was listening to that, I was getting into the sounds of records and perceiving how they were made and the depth in that record is incredible. Bob Clearmountain mixed it and I wondered [at the time]: what does a mixer do? And then you start to realise 'ah – that's what he does'. The main difference between my hits later in the 1980s and a record like this is that the musicianship on Avalon is pretty amazing. They could choose anyone to play on their records as could Bryan Ferry afterwards. And the nucleus of what their band was pretty amazing itself. Their understanding of what you could get out of a studio was incredible. My records with Stock, Aiken and Waterman are [comparatively] quite narrow. SAW had a bunch of keyboards but not many, maybe two or three they really liked. A Yamaha DX7, Jupiter 8 and the Linn 9000 were their workhorses. They had their little set up and that was the band. Mike and Matt were the two musicians. Matt was an amazing guitar player but he never put that to the front because it wasn't needed. He was a Ringo guitar player - he didn't do anything that wasn't needed! They were all about trying to write and produce hits for the Top 40. No – the top 5! That's all they were bothered about. They didn't do anything that was surplus to requirements. But they also made some crap records that nobody heard! But they found their formula and stuck to it like their Motown heroes. It never seemed cynical to me because they were honest about it. They weren't trying to be cool. They did go out and accept awards but generally speaking, they turned up in jeans and t-shirts – well, Pete was slightly different because he was A&R and the mouthpiece – because they viewed it as work. I met Lamont Dozier once and he said 'I get up, go into my basement, sit at the piano, press play and record and sit there for two hours. Then I come up, have breakfast, answer my mail, do whatever I do, and I go and listen it afterwards, find the good bits and say 'that's a song''. So it's quite workmanlike in a way. I don't think anybody would belittle anything Motown did. But if you want to put a negative slant on it, it's a factory style of doing things. But I also think: that's bollocks. If you're gonna be good at something, you have to put the hours in."