"Dare was amazing. It came out around the same time as Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. You can't not mention Soft Cell, and you can't not mention Gary Numan either, in popularising electronic music. I'd seen The Human League perform at Eric's in front of three people - me, Jane Casey and some drunk lying on the floor - and it was in the Martyn Ware era, with Phil Oakey looking amazing with his asymmetric haircut, and the fabulous slides and the little constructed archways which had the synthesizers, which looked - I suppose - rather Kraftwerk. And you know, ""Listen to the voice of Buddha"" [on 'Being Boiled'], the Travelogue album, was amazing and groundbreaking in many ways. It was not commercially successful at all, and I remember in particular their version of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' being incredible. But when Dare came, it was an attempt at global pop superstardom and ABBA-ness, as well as being groundbreaking and electronic. It was time I became aware of the Linn drum machine, and the programming on that album is fantastic. The engineer Dave Allen at night time would be editing instrumentals together and that became The League Unlimited Orchestra album [1982's Love And Dancing], which was also incredible to dance to in seedy gay nightclubs, which I also did [laughs]. I was then more aware of technology by this point and had been working in a recording studio with the TR-808 drum machine which, although a plastic instrument, seemed slightly paltry to the meaty sounds of the sampled bass and snare of Dare, which was the Linn LM-1. It sounded like a real drummer but obviously wasn't and was intrinsic to the sound of that album. My favourite was 'Love Action', not 'Don't You Want Me', which is always cited and is the most successful. 'Love Action' was always the one for me."

"This goes back a long time for me. This was a real defining record for Supergrass around '95 when we were first starting out. It was on the tour bus all the time and I remember our tour manager at the time really loving it. He'd wake us up every morning knocking on our door going, 'baby's on fire!', doing this mad Eno impression and that would always lift us up and make us laugh. There were so many lyrics that we'd sing at each other. I'd meet Danny and go, 'Cindy tells me…' It had this really long lasting effect on us. It's brilliant, just brilliant. It's Eno being kind of clever but dumb, sophisticated but raw and I think it's brilliant. I love his voice and the double-tracking on it and I think it ended up being quite an iconic sound. It's very unique. And for all of his technical ability, I love that he plays dumb on some of these tracks, you know, like on 'Needles In The Camel's Eye' and the guitars are big, filthy, dirty and horrible things. I love it. We almost did work with Brian Eno. We had a meeting with him in Paris before Diamond Hoo Ha and I can't remember exactly what happened but I think our timing schedules didn't work out. It was something frustrating that meant we couldn't work with him. It's weird one. It's kind of like, are they different Brian Enos? Is it a danger to confuse the Here Come The Warm Jets Brian Eno thinking that he was going to walk into a studio with us and create something that gives you that feeling because he's a different person now. I think he's amazing and he's proved to be still a musical force. An incredible guy and he was a really lovely chap when we met him."

"We used to do loads of gigs in Western Europe during the punk days because nobody really wanted us in London. But we were getting invites to go to Belgium and West Germany and Berlin. We went on the Trans Europe Express to go to Berlin once and this was the perfect record to listen to doing that. The way they sing and the whole Man Machine idea – they totally pulled it off. They were so ahead of the game. And when you listen to very early Human League – 'Being Boiled' and all that – you can hear the influence it had on them. I was never really interested in that synth sound for the Ants. I was more into their graphics. I used to design handbills and A4s and there was a couple of robotic themes on that. Musically that was being catered for by the Human League, who I thought were great right at the start. It was the mystery that surrounded Kraftwerk that I was into. We were in Dusseldorf once and we went looking for the Kling Klang studio, but we couldn't find it. Apparently it was just an office anyway. I loved that phonetically pronounced European vocal. It was almost like he read it off of one of those machines that tell you how to pronounce things. But it always had a really human feel. I think people often overlook their sense of humour. When we were in Australia in '81, they were touring too. And we were stood outside our hotel and they were all there – I seem to remember they were wearing white coats and they were all going cycling together. There was a real personality behind them. Kraftwerk were trying to break away from that whole post-war vibe in Germany and Dusseldorf was quite a modern city. Visiting the places where the music came from has made the records even more precious to me because it reminds me of the time."