"This album could be racked under 'sunshine pop' or 'pop psych'. My idea of what makes good psychedelic music isn't a fixed thing – it's about the feeling you get from a record. In direct relation to my work, I think psychedelia is about creating another reality. I work from pure imagination and records that create their own spaces are hugely appealing to me. The Aphrodite's Child album does that and this Sagittarius record does it too. They are records that really suck you into their own worlds. Present Tense takes you to paradise, it makes you want to jump into the speakers and fully experience the place that they've imagined for the listener. Growing up on the Beach Boys, I was familiar with the kind of sound on the record. It's very gentle, very orchestral, soft and lush; it offers a place to escape to from the real world. You can check in whenever you want to put the record on. In a way, the music we make as Seahawks tries to do the same thing – it's trying to conjure up a glorious utopia in a world that's clearly gone to shit!"

"In high school, I worked at The Video Room in Oakland, California. It had the largest selection of laser discs in the Bay Area. One guy owned all of them. I was smugly aware that most people were watching movies entirely wrong, and would tell them so. I’d explain aspect ratios and assure my friends they’ve never even really seen Jaws until they’d seen it at my house on the Pioneer, hooked up to my dad’s concert amplifier and massive stadium speakers, my own rig. I watched more movies during that time than I did in film school. The Manchurian Candidate was one of them, and it was just [on a] different level. I went in thinking it would be a masterfully directed political conspiracy thriller, which it was, but was also completely bananas. I couldn’t believe some of the choices made. That film gave me permission to get a little bit weird in my storytelling. Once you’ve seen an old lady execute a Korean POW while Frank Sinatra looks on in complacency, you know you can go to crazytown and the audience will stay with you. It’s not easy, but it’s possible."

"I love all the early stuff - the work rate was insane. In the time we took to do two hi hats on Hysteria they'd done an entire album. Mott was when they really got it together. I didn't think the album they did with Bowie - All The Young Dudes - was a great album. It had its moments but you could tell Bowie had put all his efforts into the one song: the rest of it was a little bit thin. Cut to a year later and they're in on their own and they're basically pushed to the deep end - sink or swim. Everybody in the media had said 'what are you going to do without Bowie?!' but Ian stepped up to the plate, he really did. He came up with truly brilliant songs. Stuff like 'Violence' was taken to a completely new place, with Graham Prescott playing violin. He'd worked with Elton John. Then it ends with the most beautifully understated song 'I Wish I Was Your Mother' - the lyric, the title even. It's a really well made record. I remember Mutt used to test speakers with 'All The Way From Memphis'. As did Roy Thomas Baker, as a matter of fact. They proved they could stand alone with this one."

"I first encountered that record when I was 16 and in college and a boy came round to my house. He was a boy who I really thought was so beautiful and I never thought that he'd even notice me, quite honestly. I had this tiny little box room in a shared house with a bunch of blokes, one of which never came out of his room - (at the same time that he never came out of his room, Tom Waits released that song 'What's He Building In There?' He never came out! I was just living next to that character and you would hear these strange bangs...) - and in that room I had a little single bed, and I'd brought my only other piece of furniture, my grandmother's huge wooden record player, with built-in speakers and the record player in the middle. This boy brought round a copy of Joni Mitchell's Blue, and I had never heard anything like it in my life before. We hung out all night and he played that over and over again. When he left in the morning, all my heart aflutter, he left that record with me and I was just enthralled by it, and I still am, to this day - I just never get bored of listening to it. Every time a song starts, it's like a really good old friend walking in a room. It's just always, always welcome."

"I’ve got a weird story about when I first heard “Good Vibrations”. I was really scared of going to the dentist and my Mum had made me this appointment. I was literally terrified, we were sitting in the waiting room, there was a radio and “Good Vibrations” came on. Then they called my name to go into the dentist and I was still really scared, but at the same time this beautiful thing was coming out of the speakers “When I went in, they had the radio on in there as well. It was absolutely mad and my emotions were on edge, but I just couldn’t get over hearing that song. I don’t know if it was because I was in that situation and really hyped up emotionally, but every time I hear that song I remember that feeling. “It really stuck with me and obviously when I hear it now, it’s such a brilliant record, but it’s great that you can hear something that brilliant when you’re sitting in a waiting room, in a place where you’d hardly expect to have a musical revelation. “It’s funny how you used to listen to the radio more back in those days. I wouldn’t have had the ready cash to go out and buy “Good Vibrations”, so I’d just listen to the radio until it came on. People did that more, you’d have little transistor radios everywhere and you’d be waiting for your favourite music to come on, and when something came on you loved you’d turn it up"