"He's new to me, a Londoner, and relatively recent. Again I fall back on the challenge of digging through so many day-to-day musical releases in that grandiose search for something satisfying. This came as a pleasant surprise, without any backstory whatsoever. I first came as a visitor to London in the ‘70s and it was a period of discovery. London was probably the liveliest place to experience something new. Here it's probably the lyrical content and a consistency that strikes me most. Some people can even find messaging musical offerings that have no singer whatsoever: it's messaging. I think that's a good word. 

I was just wrapping up an appearance where I bumped into the great guitarist Steve Cropper from Booker T. & The M.G.'s and of course they were the backing band for so many of the great artists on the Stax label. I said, ""Gee, Steve, the Stax records had a remarkable sound. Release by release they had a consistency you could identify. How did you dream up the idea?"" And he said, ""Well… we didn't. I agree that the Stax records have a recognisable character. But the studio in Memphis was in one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods. To avoid having the gear stolen after a probable break-in, we nailed everything to the floor!""

"Me and James were obsessed with the NME ‘100 Best Albums Of All Time’ in the mid 80s, so we started buying as many as we could - Marquee Moon, Blonde On Blonde, The Clash... some of them we had anyway, but then there were things like Pet Sounds, which was really high, and when you’re 14 you think of the Beach Boys as fucking idiots going “doo wop”, don’t you? We both got What’s Going On and I think it’s the first time I realised, in an exotic way, that politics could translate. Through colour, through country - you could still feel the desperation of someone else even though it was your first exposure to music like that. Obviously my Mum and Dad had tons of records, but the intimacy of playing that in your bedroom and being transported to another world of the same anger you were feeling, but then in such a graceful way. ‘Inner City Blues’, the title track, ‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’. There’s lot’s of brackets - lot’s of songs with brackets. I love that idea of brackets. I love the cover. You can still put it on today, and obviously in the studio we have lots of vinyl and a record player - you put that one in particular and it drifts, it seduces you but it also stimulates."